


with only you

by orphan_account



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Age Difference, Bottom Bucky Barnes, Breeding Kink, Chubby bucky barnes, Comeplay, Dacryphilia, Established Relationship, Face-Fucking, Flirting, Frottage, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Masturbation, Nomad Steve Rogers, Outdoor Sex, Porn With Plot, Pre-World War II Bucky Barnes, Retirement, Rough Sex, Size Difference, Spit As Lube, Time Travel, Top Steve Rogers, bucky is 21 and steve is 40/106, hand-wavy science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:48:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 47,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25084927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Steve, semi-retired and still a bastard who doesn't follow rules, touches a cube that sends him to 1938, eighty-six years in the past. He takes it well. Bucky, twenty-one and baby-faced, takes it even better.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 146
Kudos: 530





	1. Chapter 1

“Steve, don’t touch that!”

* * *

—it hurts, kind of, like he is being ripped apart and stitched back together all at once, in an unending pattern, and in the vast blackness he passes a blurry figure with fluffy yellow hair and cornflower blue eyes and clothes that fit too loose on his slight frame, with an expression that is bemused, and he thinks, maybe, it could’ve been him before the war, before the serum, when he was small and almost always bruised, with bloody knuckles and sharp grins and an attitude only slightly smaller than it is now, but surely not because that makes no sense—

* * *

He lands on his feet. His senses are disoriented; the sunlight is almost blinding through the thin white curtains and the smell of turpentine is so pungent it burns his nose and the drab colorings make him think that, perhaps, he’s colorblind again. It’s familiar, like the curvature of his nose in the cracked mirror in the bathroom off to the left, like the thickness of Bucky’s hair after a fresh wash in the kitchen sink. He knows where he is without looking around because this the foundation of who he is.

“Huh.” Steve scratches his face. His beard, trimmed at a hotel in Sweden to fit the new cowl Bucky forces him to wear whenever he takes the intermittent mission, is still there; it’s a small comfort that eases his mind. He’s the same, at least, even if he isn’t in the same place. Or time, it seems.

Is there time for him to focus on the smattering rush of panic bubbling in his gut before he sets out to figure a way to get back to 2024?

He decides that yes, there is.

He’s _retired_. He’s sort of retired, and he’s married, and he and his husband are discussing adoption because they both want a plethora of children in their big house in Romania—they didn’t add all those extra rooms for no reason—and it’s his turn to cook dinner tonight and do the laundry tomorrow and weed the garden in the afternoon. He’s not Captain American anymore and hasn’t been for nearly a deacde—he shouldn’t have been at that wreckage sight, aiding in cleanup, but Sam asked him, said it was an easy mission and he hadn’t seen Steve in a while, wanted to chat with him a bit, and he isn’t going to tell one of his most cherished friends no.

He doesn’t belong here. He belongs _there,_ in 2024, because that’s where his life is. That’s where his husband is.

He thought he was _finished_ with time travel. He thought he was _finished_ with leaving Bucky.

The apartment is as small as he remembers. The kitchen is clean but the table is messy with sketches and fruit from the market just down the street. There are books scattered on the floor next to the sofa, dog-eared and well-read; clippings of newspapers and art decorate the walls, and there are clothes strung up on a line in the corner above the radiator that goes all the way out to the iron fire escape. The door to the one bedroom is opened because it was always easier to keep the apartment cool that way, especially in late summer.

Steve takes a step forward and chuckles. The creaky floorboard between the kitchen and living room is there, just like he remembers. On the table, among thin sheets of sketches and fruit, is a newspaper that he must have kept after his morning route. He picks it up and reads the date.

_Wednesday, August 3, 1938._

That makes him twenty, and Bucky twenty-one.

And—oh, _Bucky_.

He’s at the docks. It’s grueling work, dawn till dusk, in extremes, and it’s especially hard this time of the year, with the sweltering heat that sinks until it feels like a weight, but it pays well, and they can’t be too picky with where they get their money from, and it offers the two of them a sense of security that previous jobs never did. With a glance over his shoulder at the sun, Steve sees that it is very nearly ready to set, shining like bright gold into their home. Bucky will be here soon. 

He takes a seat on the beaten, broken sofa, smiling at the smell of _them_ that wafts beneath his nose, and waits for Bucky to return.

* * *

Steve must have fallen asleep because he’s awakened by Bucky calling his name an indiscernible amount of time later. He’s used to napping lazily in the evenings on the couch while Bucky reads at his feet; apparently, that’s a learned habit that even being displaced eighty-six years in the past can’t shake out of him.

“Stevie? You here?”

Steve blinks, fast and hard, as he sits up on the sofa and stifles a big yawn. The yellow sunshine from earlier has faded and darkened into an orange-apricot, flooding everything in a fire-like light full of shadows and secrets. Bucky is at the door, removing his coat, with his back turned; he’s slight, somewhat, barely more than a kid who has yet to come into his own and shorter than Steve remembers him being, and it’s almost odd to see him like this—so young, so small, so fresh, so unaffected by the horrors that are waiting for him later in his long, eventful life.

It all worked out in the end, though. They got their happy ending, with a pair of matching gold wedding bands from both of their mothers and a day in October to call their own as proof of that.

For a moment, a lightning strike of unbridled emotion surges over Steve. His heart quickens, and his breath elevates, and his mind races, and he wants to grab this Bucky, so different from his Bucky, his husband, in the future who likes to roll over and kiss Steve in the middle of the night because he’s in the mood for loving _again_ , and hug him, and protect him from the world, from the galaxy, from everything that will come his way.

That feeling of urgency is gone as quickly as it came, like rain that evaporates before it even hits the ground because it’s so hot, and settles into a heavy weight on Steve’s shoulders that feels like an oppressive hug. This is normal; this is expected. There is not a single moment in time that he can remember not wanting to take Bucky’s pain away, all though their years spent together. It’s like the first star of the night, the northern star—it’s a guarantee, like the promise of a sunrise after a dark night.

He sighs, deeply. “Right here, Buck.”

Bucky hangs up his coat. “Stevie, I have so much to tell you,” Bucky is saying, energetic even after hours of working in the sun, and Steve puts his elbows on his knees, rests his face in his hands, and smiles, and looks at Bucky’s back. “D’you ‘member Hank Irving, from the Christmas party last year?”

Steve’s smile turns into a big, toothy grin because yes, he does. “Sure do, Buck.”

“Well, you’ll never guess what that greaseball did this time,” Bucky continues with an edge of exasperated anger to his voice; he kicks off shoes, leaving them haphazardly shoved into the corner, something that has always bugged Steve, and then turns around. “He fuckin’ asked me if—“ He trails off when his eyes land on Steve. “You’re not Stevie.”

“No, I’m not Stevie.” He hasn’t been Stevie for a long time. His Bucky doesn’t call him that anymore. “But I am Steve.”

Bucky blinks, dumbfounded. “Huh.” He doesn’t make any move forward. “Are you sure?”

Steve smiles. “Yeah, I’m sure.” And it must be a sight—he has a full beard, and his hair is dark and light, like honey and brown sugar, and he is so large, and his suit is filthy from digging through the rubble that collapsed atop the green sparkling _thing_ he held in his hand that has to be what whisked him eighty-six years back in time. “Just a little older.”

“I’ll say.” Bucky takes a step forward and he is only a few feet in front of Steve. Steve’s fingers itch to grab Bucky’s hips and pull him into his arms, like he does at home, right before they fall into bed with one another; he has loved Bucky in every decade, in every universe, in every timeline, and this one, whichever it is, is no different. Only, maybe—can he touch? Is that okay? Is he allowed to hold his oldest friend and only lover? “Where’s my Stevie?”

Steve has a flash of the young man he saw in the darkness as he was pulled from his time and brought back here; he was small and he was angry and he was scared, and Steve doesn’t know where that version of him was sent. He thinks, maybe, that he’s with Bucky—his Bucky, his husband, in 2024, who is no doubt doting and fussing and loving on him, something that’s just his nature—but there is no guarantee. Time is unstable, and Steve never pretended to understand the exact mechanics of it.

“I don’t know.” His brows knit. “Maybe he’s in the future with my Bucky.” He looks at his hand, then, and imagines the gold ring under his fingerless gloves. It used to belong to Bucky’s mother, and one of Becca’s grandchildren kept it safe, having given it to Bucky a few months after he came out of cryo, and it’s been Steve’s ever since he stepped off the platform by the lake. It makes him smile to know it’ll be there when he undresses. “My Bucky will be good to your Steve, if that’s where it is.”

Bucky opens his mouth to speak, but closes it quickly; his lips are pink, like they’ve always been, and his face is freckled from the sun, and he looks like the personification of the warmth of summer. “Your Bucky?”

“Yeah. He’s amazing.” He feels a stab of sadness, then, for not being able to hold Bucky tonight as he nods off. Whatever this is—this sudden leap backward in time—it’s definitely strange, and he hopes it is temporary. Thor warned them before they dug through the remains of the ship that there would be a few questionable artifacts inside that were stolen during the five year gap, and the dark green glowing cube probably shouldn’t have been touched. Steve isn’t worried just yet, though. Things usually tend to orientate themselves more often than not, like that time he was turned into a dog for a week, and he’s banking on that. “So, are you gonna tell me about that greaseball?”

“Oh, no. No, no, no.” Bucky shakes his head and holds his hands up as if to halt any further conversation. “You can’t just change the subject like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like that!” Bucky’s voice raises so high his tone cracks. Steve fights back the urge to coo at how adorable Bucky is. This Bucky is so child-like in his mannerisms; Steve almost forgets that there is war looming over the horizon, that Bucky has not been touched by that darkness just yet and how it changed him so much when he was drafted. “You’re deflecting. Who are you really? And where is Steve?”

“I’m Steve.”

“Fine. You’re Steve.” Bucky’s hard expression falters. “How’d you get here?”

“I don’t know.” That’s a lie—Steve knows exactly what happened to him; deciding the amount of information to give to Bucky, however, is the problem. He doesn’t know the parameters of this little trip. “I was helping friends clean up a wreck, and I… touched something I probably wasn’t supposed to.” He’s sure that Sam is simultaneously cursing Steve for being born and wondering how he’s going to break the news to Bucky that Steve went _poof_ because he still has an issue listening to orders, even after all these years _._ “And it brought me here.”

“From where?”

“Uh… 2024.”

That isn’t breaking any time travel laws, is it? Is there any time travel laws? For Christ’s sake, he and Tony nearly made a muck of 1970 to retrieve the particles—if Tony running into his father and Steve being struck dumb at seeing both Howard and Peggy alive, then it isn’t going to hurt telling Bucky the truth.

Some of it, at least. There are probably some details he ought to keep to himself. Like the fact that the few drunken kisses the two of them shared before the war led to them walking down the aisle hand in hand in 2023. 

Bucky swallows audibly but doesn’t say anything.

Steve leans back on the sofa and crosses his arms over his chest. “You’re taking this awfully well,” he muses, picking at a loose thread on his uniform. It’s a mimic of the old stealth suit; instead of dark blue, though, it’s black, and the star is gone in favor of a reinforced chest pad that both Bucky and Natasha demanded, and his name is stitched into the fabric in silver on his left shoulder. There’s silver stitching, too, that accentuates his curves and serves to make him look good. It’s his favorite.

(It’s Bucky’s favorite, too.)

“I could say the same for you.”

“I’ve seen weirder.” He takes his gloves off and puts them on the table in front of the sofa; he feels a warmth gather in the pit of his stomach and spread when he sees his wedding ring. On his right hand, though, he notices another ring he hasn’t seen before. It’s thick and wide, probably the size of Steve’s thumbprint, and black, with dark green jewels scattered on the band that are suspiciously the same color of the cube he grabbed. The jewels wrap around the band in three tiers; they’re all shining but one is particularly brighter than the rest, almost like it’s a blinking star. His mind falls over itself. If he had to guess, he would say the stone came with him, too, and morphed into the ring on his finger. Huh. “You get used to it.”

Bucky puffs out a little laugh. “You sound so goddamn dry,” he says, and there’s a little smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. Steve knows that it’s crooked, higher on the left than the right, just like it is now, too, in the future, and it brings pleasant warmth into the meat of his heart to know that the man he loves has always been so hauntingly endearing. “You’re really Stevie, huh?”

Steve looks up at Bucky. His eyes are so blue, so clear; his cheeks flushed pink and the mystified expression on his face makes him look even younger than Steve knows he is. He’s just a kid, after all—only twenty-one, and how goddamn unbelievable is that? Steve’s been so old for so long he forgot he was once young.

Steve nods. “Yeah.”

Bucky takes a deep breath. “Okay,” he says, nodding his head and letting his breath out. “Okay, then.” His eyes are wide and his voice is unsteady; Steve thinks he’s talking more to himself than anything, and that is absolutely charming. His Bucky does the same, sometimes. “Okay, then. It’s Steve’s turn to cook dinner, so I guess that means it’s your turn to cook dinner.”

“Whatever you want, Buck.”

* * *

Steve’s learned a thing or two through the years, and he busies himself with making something light and filling and quick with the vegetables and fruit on the table while Bucky cleans up in the bathroom. When Bucky is finished, wearing just his underwear and a long flowing shirt that hits just above his knees, Steve is putting two bowls of soup and bread smeared with butter on the table. There’s a plate of apple slices, too, and two cups of water. 

“That was fast.”

Steve shrugs. “I made what I could,” he replies, taking a seat just opposite Bucky. The table feels infinitely smaller now than it ever did before; he has to tuck his knees just right or he’ll topple the thing over. “Which reminds me—we need groceries.”

He still has a calorie intake to meet, and, besides, he’s not comfortable with the lack of food the apartment at the moment. In the past, he and Bucky were never _well_ off, but they did make enough to keep themselves—and the stray cats Bucky pretends to not see on the fire escape—fed. 

He snorts. “Stevie was supposed to make a list tonight and he was gonna go tomorrow after his route, but—well, you know more than I do.” He eats a bit of the vegetable soup. “This is good.” He takes another bite, moaning the way that his Bucky does when Steve’s swallowing him down his throat, on the cusp of coming, and—oh, no, that’s not something Steve needs to be thinking about. His uniform is already uncomfortable enough; having a hard dick under the Kevlar isn’t fun and usually leaves him gasping from the abrasive friction. “This is so much better than anything Stevie has ever made.”

Steve wonders why Bucky is so adamant about referring to his past self as Stevie, but he keeps it to himself. There’s either a reason or there’s not, and Steve isn’t sure he has enough space in his mind to handle another avalanche of thought.

“Comes with age.” He wants to tell Bucky that _his_ Bucky is the cook in the house, and if he likes what Steve was able to throw together last-minute he would absolutely salivate over anything that his Bucky makes.

And then he can’t stop thinking about the two of them—his Bucky and this past Bucky—in the kitchen of their house in Romania, smiling and red-cheeked and giggly, waiting for him. He thinks they would’ve hurried to get dinner finished so they had time to play with each other before Steve comes home; he thinks their lips would be kiss-red and their clothes would be gone and their cocks would be pretty and wet and their holes would be glossy and puffy from their toys, and when he asks what the occasion is his husband would give him that devilish grin and say that they were just passing the time with one another until Steve returned.

Fuck. The thought of fucking two Buckys at once, his husband and this kid in front of him, with his mouth and his cock, makes him shiver against the feel of the Kevlar on his skin. _Fuck._

“How old are you?”

Glad to have something to else to focus on, Steve takes a minute to add up the numbers. “Uh, forty,” he answers, a little wobbly. Biologically, he’s forty; technically, however, he’s one hundred and six. “Give or take.”

Bucky frowns. “What do you mean?”

“It’s a long story.”

“You could tell me,” Bucky says, easy and airy; he shrugs his shoulders and looks down at his bowl of soup, feigning indifference, but Steve knows Bucky, has always known Bucky, every year between here and now and then and all the ones lost in the middle, to war and death and rebirth, and it’s itching at Bucky to not know. “I don’t have anywhere to go, and I don’t think you do, either.”

Steve’s lips twitch into a grin. “Maybe later, all right?”

Bucky nods his head, but there’s a quick flash of disappointment filtering over his face. Steve feels sour, knowing that he’s keeping things from Bucky, but time travel is a sensitive subject and he doesn’t know how to work it. He didn’t care to learn since he thought he was finished after returning the stones. His track record isn’t all that impressive; he caused a commotion two times out of the three he traveled, and he doesn’t want to muck up his repertoire any more than it already is by _spoiling_ Bucky the life he’s going to have.

He looks at the new ring on his finger. The green jewels are unreal and alien, a shade he’s never seen before; the three rows are wide and the stones are spaced evenly apart, ten on each all around. Still, like earlier, there’s only one that’s glimmering, like it’s reflecting light internally. It’s odd. 

He wonders what it means, why the artifact journeyed with him to the past and changed its form. Of course it’s what sent him here, there’s no doubt, but why come along? And why this time, of all years? Is there something fantastical that’s going to happen that he doesn’t remember; is he some sort of “chosen one” protagonist that has been sent back to fix a ripple in time that was somehow caused? Is this the same timeline he’s from, or is it another timeline? And where is the Steve from this timeline? Did he flash forward to the future, or dissipate into thin air to make room, or was that really him, the blur of small yellow and blue, between the now and then, standing still and watching everything happen?

He has so many questions. He has nobody to ask. He feels lost, like he’s perpetually falling into an endless abyss that’s full of blinding light; the only things familiar to him are Bucky and Winnie’s gold wedding band on his finger.

“I’m one hundred and six,” he says around a muted sigh. He leans back in the chair and crosses his arms over his chest; his worry and anxiety has turned his stomach, and he isn’t in the mood to eat anymore. “There was an—incident. It’s not worth getting in to.” He takes a sip of water, buying time to gather his thoughts. “You’re the same. In the future, I mean. You’re one hundred and seven.”

Bucky looks at him imploringly. “But you’re so—” he gestures vaguely, “—young. Young-looking, I mean.” He looks down; his cheeks are pink, like he’s ashamed of telling Steve that he’s looked at him. Steve feels good knowing he’s caught Bucky’s attention. “You don’t look much older than thirty.”

“Well, I do moisturize quite a bit.” He rubs a hand over his beard and grins when Bucky lets out a laugh. “It’s a serum. It’s _the_ serum, actually. It does all sorts of wonderful things—it’s what made me like this—and that includes speeding up tissue and cell regeneration.” He’s never had to directly explain this to anybody before. Everyone’s always _known_ , and if they didn’t know they didn’t ask. “I age, but I do it very, very slowly.”

“‘Cause the serum replaces your cells and tissues too fast?”

“Yes.” Four or five times faster, actually, but that’s neither here nor there, and still offers him no explanation of how long his life is truly going to be. Thor seems to think it’s going to be a very long time before he and Bucky begin to show their true age. 

“And I’m the same way? In the future, I mean.”

Steve nods. “Yes.”

“How’d it happen?”

“We joined the army.”

Bucky wrinkles his nose and grabs an apple slice. “I don’t like the army.”

Steve grins. “Neither do I, pal.”

Bucky looks at him hard, like he’s committing every detail of Steve to memory so he can compare him to his past self. For some reason, that displeases Steve a great bit. He’s got nothing against the little guy before the serum—they’re one and the same; just a kid from Brooklyn—but the idea of Bucky comparing the two, of seeing one as better than the other, makes his skin crawl.

It’s _him._ They’re both _him._ Just like this Bucky across from him, only twenty-one and tan from working at the docks with freckles on his cheeks, and his Bucky in the future, married and ready to have children with pretty panties under his clothes that he wears just to get a rise out of Steve, are the same. They’re both Bucky.

“Did it hurt?”

“Huh?”

Bucky clears his throat. “Did it hurt?” he repeats, eyes level with Steve’s chest. Steve can’t blame him; he’s got a nice set of tits. He’s kind of a narcissist when it comes to his tits. They’re fucking _pretty_. “When you—grew.”

“Oh. Kind of.” He thinks of the chamber, how he was hot and cold, sweating and trembling; he felt his skin stretch, his bones grow and morph, his body break and come together all at once to take him from weak to strong. It was unsettling. It lasted only a few moments, though. “Yeah, it hurt. But it doesn’t now.”

“And you’re fixed? No more hospitals? You’re okay?”

Steve smiles because those are similar to the questions Bucky asked him when he first saw Steve after the serum. Of course, by that time he and Bucky were living together, had been since 1936 when Steve lowered his mother’s casket into the ground. They knew every landmark, every freckle and scar and discoloration on each other’s body.

Bucky was sure to look over every bit of Steve’s new body. He touched Steve all over, fingertips soft and insistent, settling Steve like he was a hurt puppy. By the end of that night, after Steve rescued Bucky and the others from the factory, he was shaking so hard Bucky had to lay on top of him to keep him grounded, like he used to when Steve was shivering so hard he almost trembled out of his own skin.

“I’m fixed, Buck. None of that anymore.”

Bucky’s pretty pink lips curl up into a crooked smile. He looks like an angel, ruddy-cheeked and bright-eyed. “Good.”

“How are you handling all this?”

“Don’t think it’s settled in my mind just yet,” he answers, continuing to sip at the soup; Steve watches him, with knit brows and a worry deep in his chest. He’s displaced, a man out of time once again, but Bucky is having to deal with that, too, and whatever toll it’s taking on Steve is at least mirrored for Bucky, the same but backward. “I left Stevie this morning while he was doing laundry, and I expected to return to him ironing his shirts or sketching for the paper. I didn’t. And now you’re here, and you’re Steve but you’re not my Steve, and, I don’t know. It’ll hit soon, I guess, but right now I’m not too worried.” He smiles again, small and sweet. “We’ll figure it out.”

Steve smiles, endeared with this innocent, shy Bucky. “Yeah, Buck,” he says, feeling the tension ease from his body, “we’ll figure this out.”

* * *

After the table is cleared and the leftover soup is put into the icebox, Bucky starts getting ready for bed. He locks the front door and pulls the curtains over the windows; Steve tries not to look at Bucky’s long legs or the curve of his ass beneath the thin cotton of his sleep shirt as he moves about the apartment, but that’s a losing battle.

Besides, Bucky is cute. He’s _beguiling_ —young, only twenty-one, and chubby and soft-looking and baby-faced with that extra fat that doesn’t shed even after his time at basic. Steve remembers what it was like to see Bucky hop off the train: he was so changed, with a hint of cruelty to his grin and a hardness to his hugs, but his face was still the same, if a bit more scruffy.

Steve settles against the back of the sofa and gets comfortable, watching Bucky as he pitter-patters through the apartment. He laughs under his breath. If his Bucky were here, he would be teasing Steve mercilessly for being so fucking gone on every version of him, laughing while he’s whispering dirty things in Steve’s ear about what Steve’s going to do to them later. And Steve would just smile and nod because—well, because it’s true. There’s not a version of Bucky Barnes that he won’t love. That’s just the truth.

He’s so consumed with his thoughts that he doesn’t notice Bucky has stopped behind the sofa and is looking down at him until Bucky taps him on the shoulder, asking for his attention.

Bucky swallows. “What are you wearing?” He crosses his arms over his chest, which only bunches up the fabric of his sleep shirt; his dick is poking just under the wide hem, and Steve is simultaneously joyful and upset that Bucky is wearing underwear.

“Uh.” He looks down at his body, having forgotten that he came from a mission straight to 1938. “My suit.”

Bucky wrinkles his nose. “It stinks.”

“Yeah.”

“It needs to be washed.”

Steve wants to tell him the process of washing this suit is too much for either of them to do at the moment, but he keeps his mouth shut. “Okay.”

“I don’t know if I have anything that’ll fit you.”

“Oh.” Steve yawns, stretching his arms above his head; realization dawns, and he moves to stand. “Oh.” Bucky looks so pretty in his getup. “I can just… go naked?”

Bucky’s cheeks turn a sharp shade of scarlet. “No!” He puts his hands up; Steve wonders if Bucky put the sofa between them on purpose. They were friendly throughout the rest of dinner, opting to sit at the table and talk for a little while about nothing, but maybe that ease Steve developed hadn’t found Bucky yet. “You’ll wear the fuckin’ bedsheet before you go naked.”

“Then run and get me the bedsheet, honey, ‘cause I’m not sleeping in this suit.”

Bucky’s lashes flutter beautifully; he nods, swallows, and makes his way around the sofa and into the bedroom. Steve watches the sway of Bucky’s hips and grins; teasing Bucky has always been a fun way to pass time, and it often leads to Steve pushing Bucky onto the closest surface to get a little treat. He wonders how his teasing will effect this Bucky.

“I found this,” Bucky says as he comes back into the room holding a folded linen shirt. “It should be long enough for you.”

“Thank you.” Steve takes the shirt and throws it over his shoulder as he bends down to unlace his boots; the fabric smells like lemon and dust and warmth. At home in Romania, Bucky makes his own laundry detergent, having learned how from one of the villagers just down the road, and it smells almost the same. “Can you help me?”

“With what?” Bucky’s voice is wobbly.

“The zipper.” He turns his back to Bucky and reaches over his shoulder to tap at the fastening that rises up over his neck. It’s hidden beneath the bit of his hair that flips outward in a single, thick curl. “I get my hair caught in it.”

“Oh.” He can hear Bucky’s breathing. “Yeah.” He steps closer to Steve, feet light on the floor; he puts one hand on Steve’s shoulder, the other on the top of Steve’s back. He runs his fingers through Steve’s faint curls. Steve wonders if Bucky thinks they’re soft. He’s very vain about a few things, including his hair and beard and tits. He can’t help it—he wants to look good for himself as much as he wants to look good for Bucky. “Hold your hair out of the way.”

Steve does as Bucky requested, pulling his hair to the side. Bucky grabs the zipper and begins to tug it down. It goes all the way to Steve’s tailbone, and he expects Bucky to stop and let Steve finish the rest, but he doesn’t. He keeps going, until Steve is unzipped and gravity is beginning to tug him out of his suit. He feels heavy with anticipation, but stays facing away to allow Bucky time to take it all in.

Bucky raises his hand. Steve feels the touch on his bare skin only in the sense that he’s aware of _almost_ being touched. The air in their lungs catch and hold in suspense. But Bucky pulls his hand away before his fingertips can settle. The tension that has gathered in the pit of Steve’s stomach disperses as quickly as it assembled, and he feels pins and needles all over his exposed skin, hot and cold all at once.

Bucky shuffles away. “There you go.”

Steve turns back around to face Bucky. His cheeks are pink and his lips are wet and his eyes are big and wide, almost all pupil. This close, he notices the difference in their heights; he’s over a head taller than Bucky. “Thank you, Buck.”

“Don’t mention it.”

He shoulders out of the sleeves of the suit and watches Bucky watch him. He decided against an undershirt because it was so stifling, and he’s burning warmer now, under Bucky’s inquisitive and greedy gaze, than he ever was during the mission. “I’ll sleep on the couch, okay?”

Bucky blinks out of his stupor and takes his gaze off of Steve’s tits to meet Steve’s eyes. “What?”

Steve tugs the shirt over his head and begins pushes his suit off his hips, down his legs, off his feet. “You don’t want me in your bed, do you?”

He shrugs. “It’s your bed, too.”

Steve looks at Bucky. _Really_ looks. Bucky is red-cheeked and heady on something; his lips are parted and his fingers are gripping the hem of the shirt he has on, lifting it just enough to attract Steve’s attention to what lies beneath. He knows there’s not much difference between him now and him then, the Steve who Bucky would tuck in and cuddle up close behind, Bucky doesn’t. And, yeah, he may be teasing Bucky, flirting relentlessly to see how much he can get Bucky to squirm, but there’s no real heat behind it. He’s not going to let his libido—and yearning to be held by his husband, any version of him; something he got used to—get in the way of the natural course of things.

“I’ll stay on the couch tonight.”

Bucky nods. “I’ll get your pillow.”

* * *

Hours later, Steve fumbles awake with Bucky’s name on his lips and a hand already sliding up his leg, lifting the hem of the shirt. He’s hard and hot in his hand; he swipes his thumb over the tip once, twice, three times before pressing in the wetness. He hisses at the flash of pain, shivers at the penetration, and brings his hand up to lick his palm before gripping himself again.

He wraps his fingers around the base, squeezing. Colors flash behind his closed lids as he drags up slowly, slowly, like Bucky does; he pinches the tip, just a little bit, just for that bite, and pulls his hand off completely, letting his cock twitch and drool in the open air.

It’s good. It’s hard and dry, and sometimes that’s how Steve likes it. He does it again and again, squeezing the base and pulling up and off, using the dribbling wetness as slick; his balls are hard and heavy between his legs, and he reaches down with his other hand to cup them, holding them up and letting them go. They drop back into place with a harsh tug that makes him wheeze as he draws his knees up to his chest for more room, nearly folding himself in half.

He conjures the last image he saw in his dream before he woke up. It was Bucky, both of them, his husband and the young kid asleep through the open door, and they were naked, on the same bed. Spread between them was the contents of Bucky’s toy box; his husband was showing his younger self how to hold the curving pink dildo just right to get the vibrations against his prostate as he rode it, gripping Bucky’s hands for support. They were laughing and kissing, sticky and slick and shiny between their legs from their releases, and when they saw Steve standing at the foot of the bed they pulled apart and smiled, and reached for him and brought him down between them.

He comes with the thought of how warm and wet it would have been to lay between them. He turns his head and muffles his hoarse cry into the cushion of the couch; the aftershocks wash over him like a high tide and he fondles himself until the sting of oversensitivity makes him moan in more pain than pleasure.

He opens his eyes and breathes. His mind is simultaneously empty and full—he’s conflicted and perfectly at peace, torn between wanting to figure out how to get himself back to his time or sneaking into bed with Bucky and fucking him till he cries. He’s a creature of habit, after all. 

“Fuck.” He rubs his face against the couch cushion and lets out a shaky breath. “ _Shit_.”

He sighs and wipes the tacky cum on his shirt and rolls over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is so self-indulgent but it's also my first chaptered fic in years and so if it's all over the place and somewhat unreliable, just know it isn't my fault because i gave my last remaining braincell over to the effort of learning how to spell yacht. 
> 
> [my twitter!](https://twitter.com/thetrouveur)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Think that means you ought to be spanked,” he says, and he’s talking out of his ass, really. “I’ll just pull you over my knee and give that ass a few swats.” 
> 
> Bucky blinks and wets his lips with a quick swipe of his tongue. His eyes are weighted.

It’s a recurring tap, light and gentle, on Steve’s cheek that rouses him from a heavy sleep.

After returning the stones and hightailing it back to the future to start his life with Bucky, the walls Steve built around himself through the years began to crumble the more he distanced himself from the fight. He no longer wakes up before dawn to run copious miles or stock high-calorie protein bars in the house; he doesn’t keep a weapon within reach and he completely undresses when he’s sleeping and he keeps his suit in the attic until Sam asks him to tagalong.

He’s retired, and with retirement comes softness—in the body, in the heart, in the mind. And that softness has allowed him the ease to sleep deeper, sleep longer. The sound of near-silent feet on the floor doesn’t wake him up anymore and he often gets well over eight hours of continuous rest before Bucky kisses him awake.

Steve opens his eyes slowly. The room is bathed in bright yellow sunlight; there’s a faint breeze rustling the thin sheet he pulled up over him sometime last night. He looks around, bemused and lazy with drowsiness, out of place but at home in the rawest of ways. He’s right where it all started.

He rolls onto his side, facing outward. Bucky is kneeling in front of the sofa, dressed for the day, with his hair slicked back and his shirt buttons undone, flashing glimpses of his tits. There’s a small smile on his face.

“Hey,” he greets, voice thick and groggy. He reaches out and wipes a stray eyelash off Bucky’s cheek. “What time is it?”

Modest and precious, Bucky leans into Steve’s touch and smiles like he’s being given a gift he isn’t sure he deserves. “It’s still early.” His voice is soft and quiet. “I don’t work today.”

“Oh?” Steve raises a brow.

Bucky shakes his head. “Nope.” He grins. “Went down earlier and told the foreman you weren’t feeling good. He said it’s okay if I stay home a few days to take care of you.” He shrugs, but his cheeks turn dusty red and he looks away, squirming under Steve’s attention.

“So you’re a fibber now, huh?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time I told a little white lie for you.”

Steve caresses the skin just under Bucky’s eye. It’s soft like a leaf blade; he could press in, hard, if he wanted and make Bucky cry with the pain. He isn’t sure how that makes him feel, knowing that this Bucky is so _fragile_.

“Think that means you ought to be spanked,” he says, and he’s talking out of his ass, really. “I’ll just pull you over my knee and give that ass a few swats.”

Bucky blinks and wets his lips with a quick swipe of his tongue. His eyes are weighted. “‘Fraid that’s gonna have to wait. We need to go to the market, and the store will run out of apples if we don’t hurry.”

Steve scratches a hand over his face, rubbing his beard. “What am I supposed to wear?” He gestures at his sprawled body, as if Bucky needs a reminder that he is more than twice the size of the man 1938 Brooklyn knows.

Bucky looks his fill. His eyes start at Steve’s feet, tucked up under the sheet, and trail along Steve’s legs, taking in the muscles and the hair and the uneven tan that’s the result of spending too much time in the sun in his swim trunks. The sleep shirt is pulled up just enough to give Bucky a tease of what’s underneath; his curious gaze stops on one of Steve’s thighs and he swallows.

Bucky blinks himself out of whatever stupor it is that he’s in and meets Steve’s eyes. “I got you these.” He holds up a pair of dark pants and a large shirt similar to the one he has on. “They ought to fit.”

Steve takes the clothes with a smile and maneuvers into a sitting position. “Thank you.” He unfolds the pants and tugs them up his legs. Standing, he does up the buttons and wonders if Bucky has a spare leather belt anywhere. “Where’d you get these?”

Still on his knees in front of the sofa, Bucky looks up at Steve and grins, dazzling and alluring. “I stole ‘em off Jamie O’Malley’s line,” he answers, devilishly innocent.

Steve’s laugh surprises him and he very nearly falls over. “Bucky Barnes, you’re a fibber _and_ a thief.” He shakes his head and tugs off the sleep shirt; he doesn’t have to see Bucky to know that Bucky is watching him. He’s always watching. Steve wishes he would touch, too, because being so close to the man he loves but not being able to love him is a yearning so deep it’s torture. “What am I going to do with you?”

Bucky makes a noncommittal noise that draws Steve’s attention. Their eyes meet and hold and a heated, onerous moment passes between them before Bucky says, “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

* * *

“I don’t know which kind to get.”

Steve picks up a bundle of zucchinis and looks over at Bucky. He’s holding two totes of apples in either hand and looking back and forth between both with a furrowed brow and a worried-red bottom lip.

“What’d you say, Buck?” Steve sets down the bundle, deciding it’s too big to be good, and grabs another. It’s lighter in his hand, with considerably less than was in the first but the zucchini feels harder.

“I don’t know which kind of apples to get,” he says with a long-suffering sigh.

Steve smiles. “They’re both good.” He sets this bundle down, too, and reaches for another. “You like both.”

“Of course I like both!” His voice cracks and it makes Steve’s grin broaden even as Bucky’s cheeks turn the same shade of red as the tote of apples in Bucky’s left hand. “That’s why I can’t decide!”

“Well, get both.” Steve shrugs, having finally found a bundle of zucchini he’s happy with. They’ve been here for half an hour, filling up half the cart with fresh produce and modest cuts of meat that’ll get them through for at least a month. Steve may have to find himself a small job if he’s here for longer, though, because he knows what happens to him when he doesn’t meet his caloric requirements on the regular. It isn’t pretty and Bucky shouldn’t have to see it. “I’ll make a pie out of the ones you don’t eat.”

Bucky blinks, bemused. “You’ll what?”

“I said I’ll make a pie—”

“I know what you said,” he cuts Steve off, near incredulous with disbelief. He sets both totes of apples in the cart. His eyes are on Steve. “I just can’t believe you said that.”

“What? That I’d make an apple pie?”

Bucky nods. “Steve Rogers does not make apple pie,” he says, putting his hands on his hips in a haughty manner. He looks so fucking cute, like every dream Steve has ever had. “He doesn’t know how.”

“I’ve got news for you, pal.” Steve pushes the cart into Bucky’s thigh with a grin. “Steve Rogers learned how to make apple pie.”

“Since when?”

“Since you wouldn’t make me any.”

Bucky puts both hands on the cart and uses it as a brace as he leans forward. “I find it hard to believe that there’s something I wouldn’t do for you.” He smiles, mischievous. “I can’t tell you no.”

Steve crosses his arms on the bars of the cart and leans forward, too, and he and Bucky are just a few inches apart. He could kiss Bucky’s pretty lips if he wanted to, lick right inside and suck Bucky’s tongue in that way that makes Bucky go stupid with it. And he wants to—he wants to so badly. He hasn’t gone a day without kissing Bucky since they defeated that purple bastard; he’s used to that gentle affection and not having it makes him feel off-balance and spoiled, like his center has shifted and he hasn’t acclimated yet.

He’s married to Bucky. _He’s married to Bucky._ And yet—and yet. Bucky doesn’t know that.

“You tell me no quite a bit.”

“I do not.” Bucky shifts on his feet and presses forward. His arms bracket his chest and he’s pushing his tits together, making them look bigger than they are. Steve knows Bucky’s nipples are hard under his linen shirt without having to look. “When have I ever told you no?”

This corner of the market is empty. Nobody would bat en eye, though, even if it wasn’t. This neighborhood is historically notorious for its queer population and, really, the whole block knew Steve and Bucky were gone for one another before even they did, only succumbing to the torrential pining between one another after Steve rescued Bucky from that factory.

Steve grins, inching just a little bit closer. He can see the flecks of gray in Bucky’s blue eyes. “Well, there was this one time—”

“Mr. Barnes!”

At the loud voice, both Steve and Bucky pull away from one another so quickly the cart nearly topples over; Steve rights it while Bucky turns and greets the man who inadvertently interrupted their moment of flirting.

“Mr. Garner!” Bucky’s voice pitches high like it always does whenever he has to talk to someone he doesn’t want to. “How are you, sir?”

Steve straightens to his full height and looks around Bucky to see the man standing in front of them. He’s old and sun-weathered with skin that looks like leather; he’s wearing an impeccable gray suit with a shiny pair of gold-tipped black shoes. A sharp yellow handkerchief is folded into his breast pocket. Steve has the intrusive idea that he knows this man, but he can’t put his finger on what memory he’s from.

“I’m fine.” Garner puffs out his chest a bit. He’s shorter than even Bucky, though, and he isn’t that intimidating at all. “Where was Mr. Rogers this morning? He missed doing his morning route and my daughter had to do it for him.”

Steve winces as the fuzzy memory of this man clears. How could he forget Henry Garner? 

Bucky looks down at his feet and fiddles with his thumbs. “He, um, he got—”

“He came down with a cold,” Steve answers for Bucky, coming around to stand beside him. He holds his hand out and shakes Garner’s hand, fixing his Captain America smile on his lips. Bucky always pokes fun at him for it, saying it’s like a retail worker’s customer service voice. “I’m Sam Wilson, a friend of Steve’s.”

Garner frowns. “I didn’t know Mr. Rogers had any friends besides Mr. Barnes.” He narrows his eyes at Steve, accusingly, like he’s trying to find a flaw in Steve’s story. Steve, used to being scrutinized, holds steady. “I’ve never seen you around before.”

“You wouldn’t have. I’ve just moved back to Brooklyn and I’m staying with Steve and Bucky until I can find a place of my own.”

“And how do you know Mr. Rogers?”

“His mother helped deliver my younger sister before we moved to Indiana. She was always kind and would often stop by to check in on my sister. Sometimes she’d bring Steve and he was a fun kid. We kept in touch while I was away.”

Garner nods his head once before turning his attention back to Bucky. “I can’t keep letting Mr. Rogers miss work like he does,” he says, wiping imaginary dust off his suit. “I know I hired him well aware of his susceptibility to sicknesses, but I did not expect to have to work around him as I do. The whole point of hiring him was so my daughter can work printing, but I see no point in keeping him on my payroll if he doesn’t going to show up to work, regardless if he’s sick or not.” He puffs his chest. “I’ve worked with worse than a measly cold before. It isn’t going to kill him.”

Steve’s smile trembles, just a little bit. He doesn’t remember Garner being so hateful.

Bucky coughs, clearing his throat. “With all due respect, sir—”

“If I may, Mr. Garner,” Steve interjects once again, cutting his eyes at Bucky. Nobody uses the phrase ‘with all due respect’ unless they’re about to be very disrespectful. “I don’t mind to take over Steve’s routes until he’s feeling better, if that’s all right with you. It’s been a while since I’ve been back in town, but I know my way around pretty well.”

The words are out of Steve’s mouth before he’s aware of what he’s saying. All he knows is that fucking up the timeline beyond repair probably isn’t the best thing he can do while he’s here, and if assuming control of the newspaper route is all it takes to keep things more or less in line with the natural progression, so be it.

Besides, it’ll do him some good to walk the streets of the place he grew up in. He may even start jogging again, for the simple pleasure of it.

Garner appraises Steve with a lift of his brow. “And you said your name was?”

“Sam Wilson.”

Garner is quiet as he stares at Steve. Bucky is pouting, arms crossed over his chest and angry, apparently, at the way Garner spoke; he’s spent so much of his time coming to Steve’s defense that he feels miffed when he doesn’t have to anymore. Steve is sweating. He misses air conditioning a lot more than he thought he would. Being retired spoiled him. He fucking hates the thirties.

“Okay.” Garner lets loose a breath and holds his hand out for Steve to shake. “Meet me outside the newspaper office tomorrow morning at five and I’ll give you the prints for the day.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Garner makes a grumbling noise that isn’t exactly kind before pivoting on his heel and walking away. Steve waits until the man is out of earshot before he turns and looks at Bucky with a crooked grin on his face. “I don’t remember him being that much of an asshole.”

Bucky’s face is sour. “He’s a motherfucker, is what he is,” he drawls, angry and offended on Steve’s behalf. “He has no right to talk about you like that. No right at all.”

“Careful there, Buck. You keep talkin’ like that to preserve my honor and I may start swooning right here.”

Bucky rolls his eyes, but his lips twitch and it isn’t exactly a grin but it’s close enough. “He’s just—he’s just a cunt of a man, Stevie. I wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire.”

Steve moves back around to take hold of the handles on the cart and bumps it into Bucky’s thigh once again, uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation. “He’s not worth wasting your energy on, Bucky. Okay? He’s not going to hurt my feelings.”

“He’s a piece of shit.”

“He is, but it won’t do you any good to get mad.” Steve pushes the cart again. Bucky takes the hint and moves to stand beside Steve as they continue along through the market. “You don’t have to make it a fight every time somebody says something bad about me. Not everything has to end that way, you know.”

Bucky puts his hand on the side of the cart. “It always ends in a fight when it comes to you.” His fingers are so close to Steve’s that he can reach and link their pinkies if he wants to. And he wants to. And he does. And the touch, small as it is, is just as grounding as it is fracturing. He wants to skin himself down to bone and step inside Bucky’s body. He isn’t sure how much longer he can stand not being skin to skin to Bucky.

Steve looks at their hands. Bucky’s finger is missing its ring. He smiles, bittersweet because he knows how their life ends. Or begins, in a sense. “It doesn’t have to anymore, Buck.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything, but he does squeeze Steve’s pinky a little bit tighter.

* * *

“I cannot believe you did that.”

Steve sighs. “What was I supposed to do?” He follows Bucky into the apartment, clutching his injured hand high against his chest while the other is carrying the bags of groceries. “Ignore her? Let her do it on her own”

“No.” Bucky puts his few bags on the floor in front of the icebox and takes out the food that needs to be kept cold. He begins to put it away with an air of anger that Steve is scared to get too close to. “But you could’ve waited until I got over there to help too.”

Steve swallows around the lump in his throat. “I was closer,” he reminds Bucky as he puts his bags on the table. He doesn’t understand why Bucky is so upset with him—it isn’t as if he’s fatally injured. He didn’t know one of the edges of the mirror he helped carry was shattered, leaving behind sharp teeth that has a bad bite. It isn’t a big deal. He’s had worse. “It’s okay.”

“No, it isn’t okay.” Bucky shoves the last bit of fresh cut meat into the icebox before shutting and latching it; he turns to look at Steve. His face is pale and his jaw is clenched. “You’re too goddamn kind for your own good and it makes me sick to my stomach when I have to worry for you because you won’t worry for yourself.”

Steve pulls his hand from his chest and looks at the cloth-covered gash. He knows it’s deep and long, expanding the entire width of his hand. The lady who he took the fractured mirror from gave her handkerchief. He feels bad for ruining it. It was so pretty. 

“It’ll be okay,” he says again. “It doesn’t really matter.”

“It matters to me!”

Blanching, Steve looks up at Bucky; his guts cramp when he sees the harrowed, half-fuming expression on Bucky’s face. “Bucky—”

“Don’t use that patronizing tone with me, Steve.” Bucky stalks forward until he is standing right in front of Steve. His hands are on his hips and the top of his nose is red from irritation, and Steve doesn’t think now is the time to tell Bucky he’s cute when he’s angry. “I know there’s a lot of time between you and me, and what happened for you almost a hundred years ago happened to me only a few months ago. You can’t tell me to stop worrying about you just because you’re this big, strong man. That’s not how it works with me.”

Steve looks down at his feet, ashamed that he was too preoccupied with enjoying himself to realize that he’s worlds away from being the same Steve that Bucky left behind yesterday morning. He should have put it together, should have realized that the reason Bucky is so wired with worry is because he’s used to fretting over Steve from a different time.

He and Bucky have been gone on one another for years; what started as giggly, drunken kisses shared at parties during spin the bottle as teenagers turned into a fidelity so brilliant it’s transcended everything. With that timeless love comes a devotion that runs deep into the marrow of their bones, so interwoven with the fibers that it cannot be pulled out no matter how many years pass.

He toes at a discoloration in the floorboard. He feels stupid. “I wasn’t going to.”

“Good.” Bucky huffs and rounds the table in the middle of the kitchen, pulling out a chair and gesturing for Steve to take it. “Now, come sit so I can look at your hand.”

“It’ll be healed in a few days.”

“I don’t care. It isn’t healed now.”

Steve looks at the paper bags on the table. “But the groceries—”

“They can wait.” Bucky taps the back of the chair. “Sit.”

Steve nods and takes a seat in the proffered chair, stick-straight and on edge and keeping his gaze at his feet. He’s sour, knowing his dismissive attitude toward his injuries has always caused Bucky more stress than he should have and, yet, still being heedless of how he affects Bucky. A thousand years can pass, and Bucky will never stop loving Steve. Steve _knows_ this. And he still continues to pretend he doesn’t. 

“Take the handkerchief off, please.”

Steve looks up to see that Bucky is standing in front of him. He must’ve gone to the bathroom to grab the kit of bandages and antiseptic they have in the cabinet while Steve was having a melodramatic moment.

Steve does as he’s asked, peeling off the bloody cloth and tossing it onto the newspaper from yesterday. The laceration leaks a few drops of fresh red blood but it doesn’t look as bad as the red-stained handkerchief makes it seem.

Bucky pulls the other chair around and takes a seat in front of Steve; their knees knock together and Steve almost jolts with the oblivious touch. It’s electric. It’s nothing and it’s everything. Steve feels frayed at the edges. He wants to get down on his knees and crawl into Bucky’s lap and allow himself to be held.

He’s sure this Bucky would let him do that, would take pity on Steve and let him cry into his lap. And that’s fine, that’s good, but this Bucky isn’t Steve’s husband. Steve just wants his husband. Steve just wants Bucky.

It’s just—he doesn’t know if this Bucky wants him.

He wouldn’t blame Bucky, either. He gets it. He does. He’s different. He isn’t _Stevie_. And that’s fair; Bucky isn’t Steve’s husband. But, God, he just wants _something_.

With one hand, Bucky holds Steve’s in his palm while the other digs into the kit on the table. “What you said about this being healed in a few days,” Bucky begins, quiet and distracted; he brings out a small jar of clear liquid. He uncaps it and the smell of alcohol tickles Steve’s nose until he has to turn away to sneeze over his shoulder. “It’s the serum, isn’t it?”

Steve nods. “Yes.”

“And I’m the same way?”

“Yes.”

“Must come in handy.”

Bucky holds Steve’s hand firmly as he pours a generous amount of alcohol on the cut; mutedly, it burns, and Bucky hurries to grab a clean white cloth to dab at the wound before the antiseptic runs off. He doesn’t stop until it’s mostly dry and he can lightly run the pad of his thumb across the abrasion, checking for shards of glass from the mirror.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Bucky flicks his gaze up for a moment before looking in the kit. “It means what I said.” He digs and pulls out another jar; it looks like iodine, but Steve can’t be too sure. “It must come in handy that you heal fast since you do the dumbest fucking shit.”

Caught off guard, Steve lets loose with a loud laugh at the incredulousness of it all. “You still tell me that in the future,” he tells Bucky around his laughter.

“Good. Somebody needs to remind you that you’re still human.”

Steve’s laughter bubbles down till he’s just smiling softly at Bucky as he dumps a bit of iodine on the wound. “I’m glad it’s you.”

Bucky doesn’t look up or say anything in return, but he does smile, faintly, and Steve thinks that’s enough.

The iodine is cold. Bucky sops up the excess with the cloth, and it stains the rag like it stains Steve’s skin, yellow-brown and darker in the creases and folds. Bucky tosses the cloth to the side and reaches in the kit once more, bringing out a roll of bandages and soft tape. 

“Who’s Sam Wilson?”

“Somebody we know in the future.”

“Oh.” Bucky hums as he lets Steve’s palm hang loose in the space between them, having to use both hands to dab ointment on the thick wad of cotton he brought out of the kit, as well. He places the cotton over the wound and traps the corner of the bandage beneath his thumb, too, and then begins to wind the wrap around Steve’s hand. “You have a wedding ring. Is he your husband?”

Steve coughs. “No,” he answers, shaking his head and biting his lip so the laughter that’s bubbling up inside is stifled. “God, no, Sam isn’t my husband.”

Bucky raises a brow. “Why do you say it like that?”

“It’s just funny, is all. He’s in love with somebody who loves him back just the same, but it isn’t me.” He tilts his head to the side and smiles; he hates being the center of attention this way, but he has to admit—watching Bucky coddle him like this has its perks. “Besides, he’s like a brother to me.”

Bucky finishes his wrapping and ties it off securely. He sits back and begins to pack everything up, pointedly not looking at the golden band on Steve’s finger.

“You’re married, though.”

“Yes, I am.” Steve’s smile grows—how has Bucky not realized that the ring Steve’s wearing belongs to Winnie Barnes? It’s a bit weathered, and had to be refitted for his size, but it still has the three original jewels on the band. They shine whenever the sun hits them. “It was the best decision of my life to say yes to them, too.”

When the kit is repacked and the strings are done up as they were before, Bucky sighs and turns to face Steve. His eyes are calm now, and his face has color to it once again; he looks sad, though, like he’s happy but conflicted about that happiness. Steve understands.

“Are they good to you?”

Steve looks at Bucky, replaying the last few minutes over in his mind before he answers. “Yes,” he answers, honestly, leaning in just a bit, and, wow, since when did they get this close? Steve feels like a wayward planet being tugged into Bucky’s atmosphere. He’s always had the stronger gravitational pull. “There is nobody else in the world I want at my side than them.”

Bucky makes an aborted, high-pitched keen before moving forward; it’s sloppy and aggressive, but his lips meet Steve’s with enough force that Steve is sent reeling into the back of the chair. Bucky follows, standing up from his own chair and then taking a seat on Steve’s lap, hugging Steve’s legs with his thighs. He puts his arms around Steve’s neck, tilts his head, and licks his tongue against Steve’s mouth.

With the gratifying eagerness of a drowning man breaking the surface of the ocean, Steve opens for Bucky. Of course Steve opens for Bucky; there’s not many things more monumental than having Bucky’s tongue in his mouth, fucking against his teeth and sharing breath, sharing saliva, sharing one another’s wetness and desperation to be as close as possible as they elicit and swallow sounds of depravity and desire and desperation.

Steve drops his head back. Bucky arches against him, into him, pressing their bodies together, mouth to mouth and chest to chest. Steve whimpers pitifully and puts his hands on Bucky’s hips, digs his fingernails in through the thinness of Bucky’s clothes. He wraps his hands around Bucky’s waist because he’s big and Bucky isn’t, so small and fat in places that make him look soft, and his fingers nearly meet in the middle.

He thinks about picking Bucky up, shoving the contents on the table to the ground and laying him down. He thinks about pulling Bucky’s clothes off and getting on his knees, throwing Bucky’s thighs over his shoulders and dragging Bucky’s ass off the table and shoving his face between Bucky’s legs and licking, sucking Bucky’s hole till he’s wet and dripping and shooting off into Steve’s hair, stupid with the need to have Steve inside him. He thinks about standing up, after, and flipping Bucky over, holding him down; he thinks about sliding in Bucky’s body, fucking into him deep and hard, and good, and then leaning over and kissing him, fucking his mouth like he’s fucking his hole, until Bucky’s crying and Steve’s licking the tears off his face like the delicacy they are and they’re coming together.

It’d be easy. It would be so easy to move Bucky the way he wants, the way Bucky wants, the way his husband wants.

It’s that thought, that realization—Bucky is Bucky, but this Bucky is small and fits strangely in his hands in the sense that he isn’t used to it, and he isn’t wearing Sarah Rogers’ ring on his finger, and he doesn’t know what he’s doing—that has Steve pulling his mouth from Bucky’s. His lips tingle; his tongue feels thick and Bucky and the apple he ate on the way back to the apartment is a heavy, heady taste in his mouth.

He can’t do it like this.

“Bucky.” He takes his hands off Bucky’s fat hips and brings them up to cup Bucky’s dark red face. “Bucky, baby. Slow down. Talk to me.” Bucky tries to jolt backward, off Steve’s lap, but Steve holds him still. He doesn’t want Bucky to flail and hurt himself. “What is this? Do you know what you’re doing?”

It’s 1938. They’ve kissed a few times, half-drunk on cheap liquor, just for the hell of it. At parties or here, while Bucky taught Steve to dance. Those are easy memories that emerge easily, unbidden and graceful. It’s just _kisses_. Steve’s kissed Rebecca Barnes before, too. It doesn’t have to mean anything unless you want it to.

This is different. This isn’t drunk, closed-mouth kisses that begin and end with giggles; Bucky isn’t teasing Steve for not knowing how to use his tongue and Steve isn’t stepping on Bucky’s feet as they try to dance with one another in the living room without waking up the whole apartment. This means something.

But Steve doesn’t know what. He and Bucky didn’t fall into one another wholeheartedly until the war. He doesn’t _understand_ this Bucky like he understands his husband. Not anymore, at least. And it’s daunting, having to relearn somebody who has been dead for decades.

Bucky’s eyes are wide and his mouth is wet with Steve’s spit. “I’m sorry.” Bucky shakes his head, trying to dislodge Steve’s grip on his face. “I’m sorry, Steve.”

“Don’t be.” Steve waves the distraught concern in Bucky’s voice off with a shake of his head. “Just—are you sure you want this? Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“Am I—am I _sure_?” Bucky laughs, but nothing’s funny. “Of course I’m sure. I’m always sure about you.” He puts his hands on Steve’s and pulls them off his face; he moves to stand on jelly legs and backs up, making space between them. “But you—you’re married, and I…” he trails off, shoving his hands in his hair and pulling. “I can’t believe this.”

“Bucky.” Steve stands. “Bucky, whatever thought you just had, kick it out of your head right now because it isn’t true.”

“How do you know it isn’t true?”

“Because I know you!”

“Do you? ‘Cause I don’t know you, Steve!” Bucky shakes his head again. “God, I can’t believe I kissed you knowing you’re married to somebody else.”

_Somebody else?_

“I didn’t exactly say no, did I?” He takes a step closer; Bucky flinches and moves back until he’s as far as he can go, against the wall, flat like a sheet of paper. “You’re not the only one at fault here, Bucky. Please.”

“I—” Bucky begins, but he stops and sighs, closing his eyes as he hauls in a breath. “You know what? It’s done.” He moves off the wall and comes toward the table; he grabs a few bags of groceries and begins to put them away in the cabinets, acting as if nothing’s happened and Steve isn’t still standing, reaching for him. “Help me put these away.”

Steve is absolutely dumbfounded. “Bucky—”

“Just help me put the groceries away, Steve,” he says with a resignation in his tone that grips Steve’s heart and squeezes like it’s trying to kill him.

He nods. “Okay,” he says, and does just that. He doesn’t know what else to do.

* * *

Steve lies awake on the couch long after Bucky has dressed down and locked himself in the bedroom, allowing his thoughts to run aimlessly in his head as he tosses and turns, kicking the thin sheet off because he’s too hot and then pulling it back up over his legs because the breeze coming through the windows they left open is a bit chilly.

Dinner was an awkward, uncomfortable affair. Throughout the rest of the day, Steve kept trying to catch Bucky’s eye, hoping he would be given the opportunity to explain and help talk Bucky through the opposing thoughts in his mind, but Bucky religiously ignored him, occupying himself with reading and listening to the wireless, dancing out of the way and offering clipped replies in answer to Steve’s olive branch of conversation. He flat out ignored Steve a few times.

It’s tough. It’s all sorts of painful and ugly and aching. Being here but not belonging; loving Bucky but not being able to love on him, not being able to crawl into bed with Bucky and hold him close, kiss him silly and stupid like always.

He never thought he would have to relearn his husband again.

It’s like there’s a hole carved in his chest. He doesn’t know what to do. He feels useless and too big, too large to hold something as soft and tender as Bucky’s clashing emotions in his hands. Like he did just after the serum, when his body didn’t fit the clothes he was wearing before the chamber and after. He’s compact and he’s stretched to the seams all at once.

It’s terrible. It’s not any better for Bucky, either, because he looked like he was about to crawl out of his skin every time Steve got too close.

Steve hates it. Steve doesn’t know how to fix it.

He can’t just tell Bucky that they’re married in the future. Or maybe he can. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what he can and what he cannot do; he doesn’t know what’s going on in Bucky’s head and he doesn’t know what would’ve happened if he didn’t stop and he _just doesn’t know._

Which is the issue.

The sound of a door opening catches Steve’s attention. He knows it’s Bucky, probably thirsty for some water, so he stays still, feigning sleep.

“Steve?” Bucky’s voice is thick and quiet; Steve almost doesn’t hear it. Bucky clears his throat. “Steve? Are you awake?”

Steve doesn’t move when he says, softly, “Yes.”

Bucky whines faintly and darts toward the sofa. He reaches over the arm and puts his hand on Steve’s shoulder. “Come sleep in bed with me.” He traces his fingers down until he can twine them with Steve’s. “Please. I haven’t slept alone in that bed in two and a half years.” He sniffles. “I can’t sleep good without you. I miss you.”

Steve flicks his eyes toward Bucky. The shadows play across his face, dark and light, making him look like a marble sculpture. “Bucky,” he says Bucky’s name like a prayer. “I miss you, too.”

He lets Bucky pull him up and lead him toward the bedroom. It’s the first time he’s been inside since he arrived. The bed is a mattress on the floor in the right corner with mounds of quilts and four feather pillows. The closet is to the left, open and messy, unorganized because neither of them care to separate their clothing. The desk under the window is cluttered and the trunk next to it is full of stuff from both of their childhoods, hoarded for the memories and comfort they offer.

Bucky guides Steve to the bed and pushes him in first, against the wall, crawling in after, back to Steve’s chest. Steve puts one arm around Bucky’s chubby tummy, shoves the other as a pillow under Bucky’s cheek. It’s hot between them, but the window is open and the breeze is a relief.

“Thank you.”

Steve nuzzles his nose just behind Bucky’s ear. “Thank you, too.”

“I’m sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry for.”

Bucky nods, once, resolute. He pulls his arms up and tucks them against his chest; his body is warm but his hands are cold, and Steve grabs both of them in one of his, holding them tight.

He wants to say, _It’s you._ He wants to say, _It’s you, you asshole. It’s you I’ve married and it’s you I’ll kiss no matter what time I’m in because I’ve loved you since the moment I was born._ And Bucky will say, _You idiot, that isn’t possible._ And Steve will say, _Anything is possible when I have you._ And Bucky will laugh at him for being a sap, and they’ll kiss, and then fall into bed, and love one another until they’re tired, and everything will be okay.

He does none of that. 

Instead, he curls his body around Bucky’s like he always does. He stuffs his nose in Bucky’s hair, breathes in the honeysuckle scent of soap that clings to Bucky’s skin, and sleeps.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Don’t placate me, Steve. Why?” The demand is final: Steve will either answer or he won’t. And when he doesn’t, when he just gnaws on the inside of his cheek instead, Bucky laughs sharply. “If you’re not going to answer my questions, I’m going back to the bar. I’ll find someone else to take care of me.” 
> 
> Steve surges forward, following his heart, because he can’t stand the idea of Bucky running into someone else’s arms when he’s right here with Bucky's ring on his finger. “It’s you!”

Though he got a bit of a late start—Bucky was clingy and cute in the blue predawn light, mouthing into the flesh of Steve’s armpit and reaching for him with grabby hands when Steve maneuvered over him to get out of bed—it doesn’t take long for Steve to deliver the newspapers around the neighborhood. The route isn’t long and there’s plenty of shortcuts that Steve recalls as he familiarizes himself once more with the streets he haunted when he was young.

It’s nice. There’s a lot of nostalgia, a lot of here-but-not-really-here, memories ebbing and flowing like the coming and going of the tide, and it’s settling to see some of the people who helped mold him into the man he is today. Mr. Carter and his wife Betty still smile the same and slip him hard candy as an unnecessary thank you for delivering the paper to their top step since she has trouble with her knee; Ruben Mendoza, the drag queen who owns the market they visited yesterday, gives Steve a wink that makes him blush and offers to buy Steve a drink. Sinclair’s eight daughters still play baseball in the street in front of their house and they coax Steve into a few quick innings before he absolutely has a to be on his way, offering him a glass of lemonade for his “great catchin’.”

(Steve has to leech into a discreet pocket carved between two buildings to bite his fist and muffle the sob that’s carving his chest and making his heart raw. He didn’t know how much he missed the people he left behind when he joined the army until being faced with them again.)

Garner’s sour attitude lessens when Steve returns to the office to drop off his satchel. He commends Steve for his quickness, citing that he’s twice as fast as “that skinny kid,” and asks if Steve would like to add to his route while he’s taking over. Garner promises a raise in pay, too. Steve says yes, of course, reckoning it’s the least he can do for his past self, earning him some extra money while the two of them are displaced.

However long that’s going to be.

He still isn’t worried. If he doesn’t figure it out, his husband will. That’s a guarantee—simple fact. There is nothing that can keep them from one another in this world; one would think the world would cease trying.

By the time he’s climbing the stairs to the apartment and opening the door, Bucky has gone for the docks. He’s left a mess of his clothes all over the apartment, like he had trouble deciding what to wear; it makes Steve smile as he goes behind Bucky, picking up all the stuff he strewn out in a mad dash to get ready.

Once he’s got Bucky’s things put away, he strips his own clothes and finds a loose pair of white linen shorts to wear. He turns the wireless on and dials the volume up till it drowns out his humming, so loud he’s sure the neighbor lady will have a fit with him when she returns from work. He sets about cleaning the apartment. He scrubs their dirty clothes clean in the tub with lukewarm water and lavender-scented detergent, letting them soak while he opens the windows to allow the fresh air in; he hangs the laundry up to dry on the line after unclipping the stiff-dry shirts and pants, putting them away in the closet.

He eats a big breakfast. Bacon is cooked in the skillet with fat leftover from last night, popping so angrily he has to take a step back and readjust the heat. Eggs follow, and he eats two apples and several crackers dipped in peanut butter to tide him over.

He dances around the kitchen, basking in the bright yellow sunlight that sifts between the thin white curtains. The wireless is playing a slew of songs with a beat that just begs Steve to sway his hips to, and so he does, bobbing his head and singing the lyrics when he remembers them as he goes about, tidying up here and there.

In the future, Bucky wakes up before him. Steve rouses around a few hours after because he can’t find his favorite pillow to cuddle against and walks into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes. Bucky is often either cooking or reading one of the many books he’s got scattered all over the house; the Bluetooth speakers are usually on, too, playing whatever songs Bucky’s in the mood for.

Steve comes around behind Bucky and nestles against Bucky’s back. He says something like, “Morning, sweetheart,” and Bucky laughs into Steve’s mouth. He pulls Bucky up after Bucky dog-ears his page and then they dance in the kitchen in their socks and pajamas, smiling into their kisses and singing off-key, because they finally have time to indulge in the life they have wanted with one another since 1936.

He misses that mundane indulgence. Moments like that are nothing and everything all at once—when you look back on your life, after years of spending it with the person you love, it’s the little pieces, dancing in the kitchen and kissing one another awake and bathing each other in the tub before their day starts, that put together the big picture.

After he’s finished eating, he takes a bath. It’s barely after noon, so the water is nearly scalding; he sinks into the tub with a hiss, pulling his knees up to his chest to fit. He soaks, and thinks, and listens to the radio, and wonders what his husband is doing.

He wonders if Bucky is weeding the garden since Steve isn’t there to do it like he promised, and then he laughs, just a little, because Bucky is always filthy after he spends a few hours in the dirt, knees thick with mud and dress stained beyond saving. He wonders if Bucky has patched up the hole in the fence that his most ornery goat Phillip chewed through; he wonders if Bucky made the trip into town to get more canning salt and if he’s given away all the blackberry jelly at the farmer’s market in the village yet and if he ordered that pretty yellow turtleneck.

He doesn’t wonder if Bucky is lonely or sad. Bucky has plenty of things to do around the house to keep himself and his mind busy; at night, he’s got a huge bed full of pillows that he can cuddle up with that smell like Steve. And when he’s feeling empty, when his hands and fingers aren’t enough, he has a box of toys just under the bed. Bucky’s never been shy when it comes to his toy box, often pulling it out in front of Steve and making Steve stand in the doorway and watch Bucky finger himself loose till he’s glossy, and then sticking a dildo in, slow, angled just right, face down and ass up, for Steve to see the way Bucky’s hole stretches so wetly around the growing girth, moaning from deep in his gut.

He makes Steve watch as he fucks himself with the toy, often until he comes. And then he continues to make Steve watch until he’s sensitive and whining, rutting into the bed to get away from the dildo he’s fucking into himself. And then he pulls the toy out, and it’s wet and shiny with lube, and Bucky’s hole is stretched wide, winking and wet, and Steve finally, finally, gets his hands on Bucky, sticks him and rearranges his guts.

Steve’s hand is on his cock before he even realizes. He’s stroking soft, leisurely, like lazy fucking on one of the mornings they decide to sleep in. His cockhead is dark and red, hot and angry; he rubs the pad of his thumb just beneath the tip. He shivers and throws his head back, groaning like he’s been punched in the gut. The noise bounces off the walls and he gets hot for it.

He’s fast, thinking of Bucky, thinking of his husband—thinking of his husband fucking himself with his toys, tossing sly glances over his shoulder to make sure he’s got Steve’s attention and adding a dazzling grin in the mix. His hair is pulled away from his face with a ribbon, loose and colorful, a curtain of cherry-brown.

Steve comes with the image of Bucky riding his favorite toy burned into the thin skin of his eyelids, brighter than the flash of colors that appear when he squeezes his eyes shut. He keeps an indolent pace till it’s too much, basking in the afterglow, and then he hurries to wash off, using the unscented soap to scrub his hair and body, before he stands and drains the tub. He puts on the same linen shorts and combs his hair; he finds some clippers in the cabinet and trims his beard.

He cleans up his mess, empty-headed after his orgasm and feeling tired. He turns the wireless down but leaves it on because the faint noise is a comfort in the silence of the apartment. He finds his pillow and sheet, folded and stuffed in the corner on a chair that Steve’s mother brought with her on the ship that took her to New York when she was young, and lays on the sofa for a nap.

* * *

Steve is startled awake when the door of the apartment slams shut. He shoots up from the sofa, disoriented, and sees Bucky kicking off his shoes as he strides through the living room and into the kitchen. He opens the icebox and begins to pilfer; Steve glances at the placement of the sun outside the windows and then at the clock, and realizes Bucky’s on lunch. He hasn’t been asleep for long.

“Bucky?” Steve’s voice is hoarse so he clears his throat. “I’m sorry I didn’t have you anything made to eat.”

“Don’t worry ‘bout it.” Bucky’s head pops up over the top of the icebox door and he grins; he’s got a sliver of sliced ham in one hand and an apple in the other. “Some of the guys and I planned to go to the diner, but I forgot my money.” He shrugs and straightens, shutting the door. “Hurried back here to grab a bite.”

“They’re not going to care?”

“The foreman owes me a favor.”

“Oh.”

Bucky’s grin broadens, wolfish and ornery, as he sets his bounty on the table and then goes after the loaf of bread. “Covered a shift for him a week ago, Stevie. What were you thinking?” He winks and cuts off two slices of bread. “I’m not always a troublemaker.”

Steve wipes a hand over his face and grins. “‘Troublemaker’ is your middle name.”

“No,” Bucky says, smiling. “It’s Buchanan.”

Steve rolls his eyes and stands. He folds his sheet and replaces it and the pillow on the chair in the corner. It’s an old chair, one that didn’t last through the decades Steve was in the ice, and though there’s photos of it in the—much larger—exhibit at the Smithsonian, he hasn’t seen it since he left for the army.

On the wooden back, just atop the flat cushion, Steve can see two initials scrawled into the lumber. _SGR + JBB._ He remembers taking his mother’s sharpest kitchen knife and etching the carvings into the wood with Bucky at his side; they were children, only eight, and they thought it was the best idea they ever had, sealing their futures together by carving their names in the chair.

He still remembers the look on his mother’s face when she saw what the two of them did. She was so angry. He’ll never forget.

Steve’s heart gets caught between one beat and the next, and he gasps at the sudden pain in his chest. He wishes she were here now, at this moment; he wishes he knew what she thought of all this, of everything.

He just wants to hug her one more time.

“Got any plans tonight, Steve?”

Steve hums, drawn from his thoughts. “None of my friends have been born yet,” he answers, twisting his lips into a grin so Bucky knows that he’s joking. “So, no, I have no plans tonight.”

Bucky makes a face and takes a bite of his sandwich. A bit of juice bursts from the tomato he must’ve added and trails down Bucky’s chin. He wipes it off before it falls onto the table. Steve is hit with a sorrow so sudden his knees nearly give out.

He misses his husband. He wants to return to his time. He wants to go home because his place is no longer in this time. He isn’t sure if it ever was.

“Well, then. You’re going out with me.”

“Hmm.” He goes into the kitchen and finds himself something to drink. “And where is it that we’re going?”

“The bar.”

Steve drinks his lemonade. “Why the bar?” he asks. What he means is: _Why are we going to the bar when we have other things to worry about, like getting me home?_

“I figured it’s best to pretend everything is okay and go about our daily lives like it’s all normal,” Bucky replies. His sandwich is nearly gone. “It makes sense. You’re taking over Steve’s newspaper route, after all. That’s normal. And going out on Friday nights is normal for me.”

Steve can’t fault Bucky for that logic. He reckons that tackling this matter by pretending as if everything is normal is a fairly sound approach; it’s simple, of course, and it involves Steve and Bucky being on the same page as one another at all times, but it’s probably the best plan either of them have at the moment. They can do it. It’ll work.

“Why the bar?” Steve asks.

“It’s normal for me to go to the bar. I do it almost every Friday.” 

“Is it normal for you to take a man twice your size that nobody has ever seen before to the bar?”

Bucky smiles. “Guess you’ll just have to come with me and find that out.”

“Guess I will.”

Bucky looks at Steve. Steve looks right back. Bucky’s face is dirty from the docks, smeared with sweat; his hands are clean, though, washed thoroughly in the sink. His clothes are filthy, stained and worn so much they’re mostly just thin rags of cloth covering his body. His hair is messy, too, like he’s shoved his hands through it to keep it off his forehead, out of his eyes. There’s a few cuts on his knuckles, fresh and bright red with blood that hasn’t clotted just yet.

“Did you hurt yourself?”

Bucky eats the last of the sandwich and wipes his mouth with the collar of his shirt. “Nah,” he says. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“It’s still bleeding.”

“I’m fine, Mom.” Bucky laughs and shakes his head. He drinks what’s left of the water in his glass and takes it to the sink. He stands next to Steve as he washes his hands once more; the suds of soap turn pink for a second before it runs white and clear. Steve inhales Bucky’s musk of sweat and heat and very nearly chokes on his lemonade. He wants to do bad things to Bucky. “Besides, I’m kind of sick of staying in all day and night. It’s not offense to you, but I’m used to having more interaction with people that aren’t you.”

“And it’ll tarnish your reputation if you don’t go out tonight, won’t it?”

“Of course it will, Steve. I’ve worked too hard to become the most loved young man in Brooklyn. I can’t let my stature in society be sullied.”

Steve deadpans. “You’re dramatic.”

“And you’re no fun. There’s a reason nobody ever asks you to come out for the night.” The words don’t hurt Steve—he’s had decades to acquiesce the knowledge that he wasn’t always the most interesting person in the room—but they seem to leave a nasty taste in Bucky’s mouth, if the way his face screws up into a tight, sour expression is any inclination. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.” Steve waves it off with a laugh. He’s heard worse. “I’ll admit that I wasn’t the most _fun_ person to have a night out with.”

Bucky sighs, but doesn’t say anything to refute the statement. “I’ll be home ‘bout the same time I was the other day. I’ll clean up and we can head out before the bar gets too packed for the night.”

“Okay.”

Bucky dries his hands on the rag next to the sink and turns to lean his back against the counter. He looks around the apartment and whistles. “You did the laundry?”

“And cleaned, too.”

Bucky looks at him—looks up at him. It’s startling, the difference in their size, good and bad, a consistent reminder that Steve does not belong here. “You make a good housewife.”

Steve snorts, thinking of his house _husband_. “Funny.” 

“I’m serious!” Bucky laughs. “Sometimes I think about coming through the door, and you’re in a pretty little maid’s outfit with lace stockings—you know, like the kind they wear in those blue movies.”

Steve refuses to think about all the times he sneaked off to flit into the shadows of a showing of a blue movie and, instead, says, “You’d wear it better than me.”

Bucky’s quiet for a moment, contemplative and inhabited. “Yeah,” he agrees on an exhale, just a little bit pink. “Yeah, I would.” He shakes his head, then, abruptly, like he’s trying to dislodge whatever image his words conjured in his mind. “I better go back before they send out a search party for me.”

Steve lets his shoulders drop; his eyes shutter and he has a visceral, impatient need to right whatever it is that he’s wronged so he can hold his husband in his arms without fucking up the sensitivity of time.

“Yeah, you better.” Steve sighs. “I’ll see you after work, Bucky.”

* * *

The bar isn’t as bad as Steve thought it would be. It’s fairly large, stuffed in the middle between a bodega and the entrance to an underground house for the sex workers in this part of the city; the bar itself is shoved in the very back, extending the entire wall with shelves of liquor tacked into the brick. Not all of it is legal; when Steve notices it makes him laugh. The stools in front of the bar, though worn with wear, are comfortable, and the pillars stationed at strategic intervals for support only hinder his view of Bucky a little bit.

Bucky is having a good time. Bucky isn’t a stranger—even this version of Bucky, twenty-one and rash and virile, it seems, if the amount of women and men he’s got longingly looking after him as he dances from one partner to the next is any indication—and Steve knows him, in every time, and he’s having fun, going from this person to that person.

He leaves infatuated smiles and wistful hands in his wake. It’s as if Bucky’s twisting everyone into a spell, glamouring the occupants with his ruddy cheeks and easy grins and the provocative sway of his hips as he walks away in the tight trousers he pulled from the back of the closet.

Steve can’t blame anyone for staring after Bucky. He’s doing the same thing. He’s always done so.

And it feels—odd. This Bucky isn’t his. Not in the way that his husband is. And, yeah, Bucky’s a slut for attention, always has been, and even is now—often, the ladies at the farmer’s market in the village flirt entirely too much with his husband, making him blush so prettily, redder than the strawberries on display, and Bucky absolutely preens under the attention. Steve’s always sure to continue that treatment at home by getting Bucky naked and spread out, in nothing but his cute panties, and moving on him, in him, all over him, and reminding him that he’s the prettiest little slut for attention he has ever seen.

But this is different. Bucky’s hungry for attention, a slut for it, and he’s getting it, like he always has, and that’s fine, truthfully. Bucky’s not too much for Steve to handle, but sometimes it’s nice to know that Steve can let his attention waver a bit if he wants to; Steve has made peace with that, knowing that Bucky will seek attention from anyone that’ll give it to him but then come back to him in the end every time. The kicker, though, is that this Bucky isn’t his husband from 2024—this Bucky is the kid from 1938, and he’s drunk more on the audience than the alcohol, and there is nothing stopping him from going home with someone who’ll continue lavishing him with attention.

Steve’s grip on the mug of beer in his hand tightens. The thought of Bucky going home with somebody else other than him is worse than a gutting, and he doesn’t want to think about it.

“Why do you keep watching him if he’s upsetting you?”

At the question, Steve tugs his eyes off of Bucky and turns; there’s a woman sitting next to him on the stool, broad-shouldered and big-boned. Her skin is dark and her eyes are even darker, and the dress she’s wearing has a neckline that’s plunging so low he can see the curve of her breasts. She’s stunning.

He pulls his eyes back toward hers. “Pardon me?”

She gives him a crooked smile before taking the glass of beer from his hand and sipping at it. “I said,” she begins, and he likes her voice; it’s deep and soothing, like Natasha’s, “why do you keep watching him if he’s upsetting you? It’s plain to see.”

“He isn’t upsetting me. I’m keeping an eye on him.”

“Is that why you were moments away from breaking the glass in your hand?” She raises a brow. The smirk on her lips is all-knowing, too, and Steve feels naked and seen. “My name is Leslie, by the way. Who are you?”

He grunts and motions the bartender for another beer. He can’t get drunk, of course, and the taste really isn’t anything to write home about, but it’s _normal,_ and he’ll do whatever it takes to settle this mess. “Sam Wilson.”

“Ah. I didn’t figure you were the Steve he talks about. You’re too big.”

Steve looks at her, furrowing his brows. “You know him?” It’s odd, talking about himself in this way; it’s detached and unnerving. He feels reluctantly privy, like a fly on the wall.

“Of course I do.” She shakes her head and laughs, tossing her arm out to motion at the expanse of the bar. The jewelry on her wrist flickers in the light. “The whole place does. He’s a sweetheart wherever he goes.”

“Oh.”

The bartender places a fresh beer in front of Steve. It’s foamy on the top, amber-colored, similar to the way Steve’s hair lightens in the summer when he’s spending copious time outside. He takes a hearty drink; no matter how chilled beer is, it still tastes like hot piss.

“He’s a great kid.” Steve knows she’s talking about Bucky still. “Fantastic dancer, too, and he can drink even Rhett Callahan under the table if he needs to.” Her smile is soft. “He’s nice.”

“He’s important to me.”

_I love him._

“Easy, tiger.” She laughs. “I’m not trying to step on your toes, Sam.” Steve is startled to hear that name, almost choking on the swig of beer he tosses back. He hopes she didn’t catch his slip-up. “He’s adorable, but he’s not interested in me and I’m not really looking to settle down. I always figured it was his friend Steve, but he’s never brought Steve here.”

It is Steve. It is _him_. But it’s complicated, and Steve doesn’t know how to explain it. He doesn’t want to explain it, anyway.

“Steve doesn’t like places like this.”

She crinkles her nose. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Steve shrugs. “He’s never been one to enjoy a large crowd of people, is all.”

“That’s a shame. Bucky talks about him quite a bit. I would like to meet him one of these days.”

Steve feels his cheeks heat and turn faintly pink; there’s something about knowing that Bucky talks about him so much that people want to meet him that makes the gluttonous part of his heart soar with fondness. He wants to be full of _like_ —he doesn’t care either way if people have a positive inclination or not, but he does preen whenever he knows that someone holds him in high regard. “He’s not that great.”

“Don’t let him hear you say that.” Leslie leans over to jostle his shoulder with hers. “Bucky’s fought people over less, and it won’t be the first time he gets into a scuffle because of something someone says about Steve. He adores that kid.”

Steve sniffs. “He isn’t a kid.”

The conversation tapers off after that. Leslie throws back the last of the beer in the mug she took from Steve and motions for another. Steve turns on his stool, facing the sea of people; he leans against the bar and surreys the crowd, looking for the telltale sign of Bucky’s titillating hips and rosy cheeks.

Steve can’t find Bucky. He peruses the crowd once again, and then two times after, and, still, he can’t see Bucky. 

“He’s gone,’ he says under his breath. He taps Leslie on the shoulder to get her attention; she’s rather irritated at being pulled away from the conversation she’s having with a woman who sat next to her, but she gives Steve her attention. “Where’d he go?”

“The restrooms are down that corridor,” she replies, as if she knows. And knows what, Steve isn’t sure. He’s going to find out, though. “Better go see if he needs saving.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Her gaze doesn’t waver. “Exactly what I said,” she says, and then turns back to her friend.

Steve stands up, shaking off the oddity of everything. He follows the way she pointed, reading the smoke-dirtied signs on the wall that point toward the hallway; the corridor is even darker than the dimly-lit ballroom and his eyes have to adjust at the sudden lack of light. He walks the length of the hallway and pushes open the door to the restroom.

His gaze land on Bucky nearly immediately, the only bright spot in an otherwise dark alcove. He’s pushed up against the wall by two older, brawny men on either side; their arms bracket Bucky’s body as they tug at his clothing, insistent and impatient, as they nip at the tender skin at the base of his throat, mean and imprinting, as they shove their hand beneath the waist of his pants and grip the hardness there, hard and dirty.

Bucky’s mouth is open, sucking in deep lungfuls of breath, and his eyes are closed tightly. He’s rutting into the palm of one man while tilting his head to allow the other room to pull down the collar of his shirt. The man’s orange beard makes Bucky’s skin redden as he continues to kiss at the flesh, similar to the way Steve’s whiskers do to his husband’s. The hand stuffed in Bucky’s pants begins to slowly, dryly, drag up and down, eliciting a whimper from Bucky that’s swallowed as the other man kisses the noises from Bucky’s mouth.

Bucky looks good. He looks so fucking good, pressed against the wall by two men nearly twice his size; Steve has the elusive thought of shutting the door and turning the lock and taking a seat in the corner to watch these men fuck his husband, and then, when they’re finished, make them watch Steve fuck Bucky even messier, even dirtier, so they know how Bucky really likes it.

He throws that thought from his head almost immediately. He’s not that goddamn depraved and perverted.

Steve turns and exits the restroom, shutting the door as quietly as he can. Numbly, as if he’s walking in a bubble, he makes his way back to the barstool and takes a seat. Leslie is still there, but her friend is gone.

She nudges him. “Is he okay?”

Steve blinks. And blinks again. “He’s fine.” He drinks the rest of his beer and catches the bartender’s eyes. He’s fed another foamy mug hastily. “He’s enjoying himself.”

“Are you?”

“Of course I am. Best fuckin’ time I’ve had in a long time.” He laughs, bitterly, and raises his glass. “Cheers.”

She cuts her eyes at him, and he knows she sees far beyond what he can hide. Steve doesn’t like being perceived, and especially by someone that he does not know. Regardless, she toasts with him, and the night goes on.

* * *

The walk back to the apartment is quiet. The moon is out above, bright and big, impossibly large; Bucky, giggly and half-drunk and throbbing from the release he must’ve had in the restroom, clings to Steve so tightly it’s a struggle for Steve to unlock the door and waltz inside.

Steve manages to get the key in the lock. He shoulders the door open and Bucky follows him in, still giggling, and goes to lay down on the couch. Steve, feeling a surge of anger and a nervous disposition, sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose; it hurts, seeing the rash of red just above the collar of Bucky’s shirt and smelling the lingering scent of the men on Bucky’s skin, and the ache is deeper in his bones than the roots in the ground of the oldest tree.

He _hurt_. And he’s yearning.

Bucky is his husband. But this Bucky isn’t. It’s complicated, and it’s fucking up Steve inside, in the meat of his heart. He just wants his husband. Is that too much to ask? Does keeping the past as it was before really important?

“Did you have a good time?”

Steve looks down at Bucky, rounding the couch and kicking out of his shoes. “Of course,” he replies, bland and disinterested. He’s not in the mood to have this conversation.

Bucky huffs. “You don’t sound like you did.”

“I don’t like places like that. You know that.”

“My Steve doesn’t.” Bucky crosses his arms over his chest. “I thought maybe you’d changed. You’re different.”

He winces. He’s really not that different. “I clearly haven’t,” he says, and it’s nearly a snarl.

Bucky stands up from the couch and looks at Steve, haughtily, with his hands on his hips. Steve almost flinches when he sees that both are blood and flesh and bone, and not the gold-threaded vibranium that he’s spent the last year waking up next to. “Why are you being so mean?” Bucky asks. When Steve’s eyes drop from his to the redness above his collar, put there by rough kissing and nuzzling, Bucky gasps. “You saw.”

There’s no point in fibbing. “I did.”

“And—what? You’re disgusted?”

“What?” Steve shakes his head vehemently. He would _never_. “No. Fuck, no.”

Bucky scoffs and rolls his eyes. “Then what’s the problem?” he demands, louder than he should be. “Am I not allowed to have fun and get off with anybody I want to whenever it strikes my fancy?”

Steve feels… nothing. Everything. He feels too much. “Of course you can. You can do whatever you want.” But he needs Bucky to _know_. “Just—“ _Please love me like this too, Bucky_ “—nevermind.”

“What?” Bucky takes his hands off his hips and drops them to his side; they twitch, and Steve thinks maybe it’s because he wants to reach out to Steve, but he doesn’t. It stings. “What, Steve?”

Steve’s gut clenches and he feels a disgusting taste rise up in the back of his throat. “What about Steve?” he asks, tugging the words from deep in the marrow of his bones. He just needs to know—he just needs to _know_ , and then he won’t ask again. He’ll be the perfect acquaintance for the remaining time he’s displaced. He _will_. “What about him, Bucky?”

“He isn’t here!” Bucky’s voice is half fury, half conviction.

“I am.”

“And you’re not him, are you?” Bucky puts his hands in his hair and pulls; Steve winces, partly because Bucky’s grip looks painful and partly because he feels Bucky’s words crawl under his skin. He _is_ Steve—he’s more Steve now than he was before. He is the man that Steve grew to be; since when is the rough draft better than the final design? “I heard you, you know. Jerking off that first night, coming on the couch—my couch. You say my name.”

“Of course I say your name,” Steve spits before he can catch himself. There is no other name he has ever called; making love to Bucky in that godawful camp in Europe ruined him for anybody else.

“Why?” Bucky’s eyes flash. “Why is it okay for you to say my name when you come, but I’m not allowed to kiss you?”

Steve’s fingertips itch with _something_ he doesn’t have time to unpack. “Bucky—”

“Don’t placate me, Steve. Why?” The demand is final: Steve will either answer or he won’t. And when he doesn’t, when he just gnaws on the inside of his cheek instead, Bucky laughs sharply. “If you’re not going to answer my questions, I’m going back to the bar. I’ll find someone else to take care of me.”

Steve surges forward, following his heart, because he can’t stand the idea of Bucky running into someone else’s arms when he’s right here with Bucky's ring on his finger. “It’s you!”

Bucky frowns. “What’s me?”

Steve takes a shuddering breath. “I married you,” he answers, swallowing around the lump in his throat. “You’re my husband, Bucky.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You gave that ring to me because you love me and because you wanted to spend the rest of your life with me.” Steve holds his hand out. “I want it back.” 

Bucky blinks. The lump in Steve’s throat grows impossibly larger and he thinks that he’s going to suffocate if Bucky doesn’t say anything. Bucky blinks again.

“You’re lying,” Bucky whispers, and it isn’t what Steve was hoping for, but it is something.

“No, I’m not,” he says. His knees are weak and he moves to the sofa to take a seat before he falls completely to the ground. “We’re married.” He scratches his hand over his face; his palm smells like stale beer and sweat. “We tied the knot on the sixteenth of October in 2023 in a small village in Romania that we fell in love with while vacationing.” They’ve not even had their first year anniversary as a married couple yet. “We honeymooned in a tent on the plot of land we built our house on. It was one of the best nights of our lives.”

A layer of silence falls over them for a moment; Steve uses it to gather his thoughts and pick through his emotions rapid-fire fast, distinguishing terror and relief and simmering desire beneath the amalgamation of feelings that have been brewing ever since he landed in the kitchen of this apartment a few days ago.

He didn’t want to tell Bucky like this. He didn’t want tell Bucky they were married at all, really, for fear that it would cause some sort of irreversible conundrum, but he definitely didn’t want to tell Bucky like that—exclaiming it loudly, and without warning, during an argument. But he couldn’t help himself; forcing Bucky to understand why him getting off with two unknown men in the restroom affected Steve so badly was paramount to keeping the ambiguity of their life and relationship in the future.

Steve’s just a man. He’s just a man in love, missing his husband so badly it feels like a sodden weight on his shoulders, a heavy, leaden anchor threatening to drag him to the deepest part of the sea and refuse the air that he breathes that comes in the form of Bucky’s love.

“I don’t believe you.”

Steve looks up at Bucky. He’s standing still, backlit by the yellow-white light of the lamp they always leave on; his hair is a mess of thick curls and his sleeves are rolled up, showing off two muscled, flesh forearms that are vastly different from the vibranium arm his husband in the future has. Steve feels like he’s been punched in the gut.

“My ring.” With no small amount of trepidation, Steve takes his wedding ring off and holds it in the space between them. He’s worn it since the very moment Bucky slipped it onto his finger; there’s a tan line, a telltale indication of his devotion. “Look at it.”

Wearily, Bucky approaches and takes the ring, bringing it up to examine it. Steve knows what Bucky is seeing: a simple gold band, resized and fitted for his finger, much larger than the woman it was originally made for, with three jewels set deeply into the metal; on the inside, there’s an inscription— _with only you_ —in big, deep letters, restored beautifully from its original glory all those years ago, that is easily discernible from the century-old _Winnie Barnes_ engraved just below.

It shouldn’t take long for realization to dawn. Bucky always played with his mother’s ring as a child, anyway, fascinated with its simplicity and meaning.

Bucky sucks in a breath when he reads the inscription. “This is my mother’s ring,” he says, mostly to himself, as he continues to inspect the ring, as if continuous scrutinizing will yield different results. “Why do you have my mother’s ring, Steve?”

“I told you.” Steve’s smile is wobbly and lopsided; his heart is on the line in a way that it never has been before with Bucky, bare and laid out on the floor before them. Bucky can do whatever he wishes with it. “I’m your husband.”

“Steve.”

Steve stands. “You gave me that ring,” he begins, “after we saved the world together, with all of our friends and our family. You told me I’ve had your heart since you were seventeen years old, and that the only thing a wedding between you and I would do is give explanation to the devotion the two of us have to one another.”

There’s a glimmer of tears in Bucky’s eyes as he looks up at Steve. “Steve,” he says, and Steve’s name in Bucky’s mouth like that— _like that_ : wrecked and rebuilt, torn down and put back together all at once—is a baptism.

“You gave that ring to me because you love me and because you wanted to spend the rest of your life with me.” Steve holds his hand out. “I want it back.”

Bucky makes an aborted noise and flings himself against Steve’s chest. Startled, Steve catches Bucky—of course he catches Bucky; he missed Bucky once already, and he’ll never do that again—and holds Bucky close.

Like a newborn baby nosing for a nipple, Bucky nuzzles Steve’s face until their lips catch, slip, and hold. The kiss is dry and closed-mouthed; Steve is partly shocked and partly riveted, too nervous to enjoy the way Bucky’s lips pull at his in case this isn’t what he thinks it is.

He puts his hands on Bucky’s shoulders and pushes him off, gently. “Bucky,” he breathes, very much affected by the proximity of Bucky’s sweat-hot body to his. “Bucky, is this what you want?”

Bucky needs to be sure. He needs to know Bucky is sure.

Bucky looks up at him, held in his arms like it’s the only place he’s ever really fit in, big or small. “I’m sure,” he answers, eyes twinkling like the brightest star in the sky. The smile on his face is almost blinding. “I’ve wanted you for as long as I can remember. And this ring means I have you in the future.” He finds Steve’s hand with his and puts the ring back on his finger, just like he did not even a year ago. “Can’t I have you now, too?”

Steve makes a noise in the back of his throat that sounds entirely too much like a whimper and surges forward. His mouth catches Bucky’s, and he kisses him hard, and deep, advancing and hustling Bucky till his back is against the door. He puts both forearms against the wood, leans his big body along Bucky’s smaller one, and kisses Bucky like he’s a starving, decaying man who has found their nirvana.

Bucky, like the good boy he is, opens himself up to Steve, body and mouth. Their tongues touch and taste, and Steve doesn’t like the flavor of beer, especially when it’s secondhand from Bucky’s mouth, but under that is the taste of Bucky, warm and clean and wet, and Steve likes that very, very much.

He swallows the noises that fall from Bucky’s lips, relishing the promiscuousness of the delicious mewls and sticky moans. It’s intoxicating, driving deep into Steve’s guts; his dick hardens in the loose-fitting trousers he’s wearing. Bucky must feel it against his thigh because he’s half-mad, gripping his fingers in Steve’s hair and jerking, hard.

Bucky’s lips move from Steve’s to his cheek. He rubs their faces together and Steve holds still, captivated by the primal lechery that makes up the thickness of his bones and the color of his soul. He knows his beard is going to burn Bucky’s baby-soft, silky-smooth face, and, _fuck_ , to know that Bucky’s doing this himself, to himself, because he wants Steve’s mark on him is truly fascinating. And hot.

Steve takes a small step back. Bucky whines pitifully and tries to grab at Steve’s shoulders to tug him back in, but Steve shakes his head and, instead, puts his hands on the lapels of Bucky’s shirt. Bucky, lips kissed-red and face the same color from rubbing against Steve’s beard, smiles, and Steve matches it with his own grin, and the two of them work together to divest Bucky of his clothing as quick as they can.

It all ends up in a heap on the floor, leaving Bucky bare. He’s gorgeous, soft and pudgy and muscular; half his body is milky white, hidden beneath his clothes at work, and the other half is tanned, with dark brown freckles that look like stars in the sky. His cock—pretty and pink, Steve’s favorite color, and wet at the tip, nestled in a patch of dark hair; the perfect mouthful, but Steve isn’t in the mood to get on his knees tonight—juts out proudly, asking, begging to be touched.

Steve taps Bucky on the cheek with his fingertips. “Are you sure?” he asks one more time. 

Bucky blinks, slow, heavy-lidded. “Am I sure?” Bucky snorts and rolls his eyes, twining his arms around Steve’s neck and flushing their bodies together once more, naked and clothed, and, wow, Steve wants to fuck Bucky like this, dressed while Bucky is bare, just to see if he can make Bucky cry with it, because the difference of being nude and covered is enticing and half-depraved. “You’re asking if I want to be with you like this, and of course I want to, I always want you, big or little, it has never mattered—”

To shut Bucky up, Steve stuffs three of his fingers in Bucky’s mouth, between one word and the next. “Then get me naked so I can fuck you,” he says, laughing, happy, at peace.

Bucky, blown wide with the mirror of Steve’s eagerness as he begins to suck on Steve’s fingers like they’re Steve’s cock, wetting them gloriously, nods and does as he’s told. His hands make quick work of Steve’s pants; Steve kicks out of his boots and socks as Bucky pushes the trousers down. Bucky’s fingers shake as he goes for the buttons on Steve’s shirt. His eyes never leave Steve’s. 

Bucky’s fingers dance across the raised muscles along Steve’s shoulders. Steve takes his fingers from Bucky’s mouth, dripping wet with spit, and sucks them between his own lips, groaning at the taste.

Ghosting the palms of his hands low, over Steve’s tits, Bucky says, nearly reverently, “Fuck, you’re huge.”

Steve laughs, light and airy and weightless. “Look later,” he says, grabbing Bucky’s hands with his and interlacing their fingers. “Where’s your slick?”

“Bedroom, in the pocket of my big coat.”

With a wink and a quick kiss, Steve darts off toward the bedroom. He finds the coat easily enough—it’s the only one Bucky has—and digs in the pockets; he finds the slick, a tin of vaseline, and goes back to Bucky, who’s still standing in the same spot Steve left him in, pinching his nipple with one hand while the other is gripping the inside of his thigh so tight Steve can see the white crescents of his nails.

“You’re not touching your pretty cock?”

Bucky blushes, gorgeous as anything, and shakes his head. “You didn’t tell me to.”

Steve grins. “Good.” He flicks off the cap of the slick and coats his fingers liberally; he bends and picks up Bucky’s leg with one hand, widening Bucky’s stance and spreading his ass cheeks, which makes Bucky let out a wanton moan that Steve eats up greedily, and with the other spreads the vaseline along Bucky’s puckered hole.

Easily, gently, he presses in with his finger, gobbling up every noise that Bucky makes because he wants to be full, wants to be overflowing with the sounds he’s bringing from Bucky’s body. When he’s up to three fingers stuffed inside Bucky, spreading and stretching, he curls them up and rubs against Bucky’s prostate with practiced ease. Bucky lets out a yelp, followed by a delightful moan; Bucky pulls his tongue out of Steve’s mouth and lays his forehead against Steve’s shoulder, pliant as he fucks back on Steve’s fingers.

Steve huffs a laugh. “Did you like that?”

Bucky’s groan is more exasperated than it is pleasured. “Obviously, I hated it,” he says, voice rising high on the end when Steve begins to fuck his fingers in time with Bucky’s tiny humps backward. “Let’s get _on_ with it, Steve. I’m loose enough for your big cock. I want to have an orgasm before the end of the night.”

Pulling his fingers free, Steve lets Bucky’s leg down and grabs Bucky’s ass with both hands, kneading the flesh roughly. “You’ve already had one,” he reminds Bucky of his restroom tryst. 

Bucky swoons. “Two, actually, but I can go for another one,” he says, curling his arms around Steve’s neck and pulling Steve in. Their bare bodies touch and grind, and Steve’s slippery cock ruts against Bucky’s. It’s sticky and messy, and Bucky feels impossibly smooth, even unshaved, and it drives Steve _mad_. He wants Bucky wet—he wants Bucky so gone that he can’t do anything but cry. “Even if it’s dry, I don’t care. As long as it’s with you.”

“Is that so?” Steve hums, tapping Bucky on the cheek; Bucky parts his lips and Steve presses his finger into the dimple on Bucky’s chin, opening his mouth wider. He licks inside, fucks his tongue against Bucky’s like he’s about to fuck Bucky’s ass.

“Steve,” Bucky says into Steve’s mouth, pulling back. “Steve, get on with it.”

“So bossy.” Steve spanks Bucky on the ass once, hard, and laughs when Bucky lets his eyes flutter. Of course this Bucky likes to have his ass spanked just like Steve’s husband—they are the same person, after all, and regardless of the physical differences between them, they’re still Bucky. “Here.” He pulls Bucky along with him as he backs up and sits on the sofa. “Ride me.”

Bucky puts his knees on either side of Steve’s legs. “Oh,” he says, holding on to both of Steve’s hands as he shakily sits on Steve’s lap. “Figured you were gonna hold me down with all of—” he pulls his fingers from Steve’s and gesticulates wildly at Steve’s broad build, “— _this_.”

Steve lolls his head against the back of the sofa and grins. “Thought about it, huh?”

Bucky nods and bucks forward; Steve’s cock slides between Bucky’s cheeks, feeling the hot viscidity of the slick, and he grunts, feverish but humored at Bucky’s responsiveness. “S’what I was imagining when those fellas from the bar had their hands down my pants, honestly.”

“Maybe later.”

Bucky blinks, mouth open obscenely wide. Steve wants to shove his fingers in Bucky’s mouth and gag him but, instead, he puts his hands on Bucky’s hips and holds on. “There’s gonna be a next time?”

“Oh, yeah.” Steve nods and undulates his hips, chasing the little bit of friction from moments ago. “There’s gonna be loads of times after this.”

 _So many loads._ Steve would laugh at his unintentional joke if he wasn’t about to have Bucky sit on his cock.

“Good.” Bucky leans forward and plants his hands on either side of Steve’s head; he kisses Steve’s nose, whisper-soft. “Want you to fuck me against the door.”

Steve is smug when he says, “Don’t think it’ll hold, sweetheart.”

“Fuck, that’s hot.”

Steve uses his grip on Bucky’s hips to lift him up, just a bit, just enough. “This okay?”

“Yes,” Bucky swears, nods, and reaches behind, arching his back, to grab hold of the base of Steve’s cock; he holds Steve still as Steve uses his strength to rub Bucky’s hole against the tip of his prick before taking mercy on the both of them and letting Bucky sink down. The first stretch is always the best; Steve can feel Bucky’s hole protesting, and then it gives, sucking him in to heat so tight and hot he thinks he’s going to catch fire and burn. Bucky’s ass is like a glove, fitting him nicely, holding him perfectly. “God, yes.”

The clutch of Bucky’s body is familiar and strange all at once. He’s home, but this is a home he hasn’t been in for a while; his heart rate lowers until it’s leveled off at a normal beat, and he’s settled. The mishap at the bar with Bucky and the burly men is wiped from Steve’s mind—all he sees is Bucky, split open on his cock on his lap, with a pink blush that’s spread out on his chest and a mouth that’s wet and ripe and ready to be kissed.

Bucky lifts up and falls back down; the thrust is shallow, an easy grind that his husband is a whore for, but this Bucky isn’t used to him and his brows are furrowed with concentration.

“Hey, hey.” Steve pets Bucky’s thigh with one hand while the other slides up his back and into his hair, bushing through the sweaty curls in a way that’s so disgustingly adoring that he wants to laugh and cry at once. “Give yourself a moment.”

Bucky frowns. “I’m not exactly new to this, you know.”

“Oh, I know.” Still, Steve pets Bucky’s sweaty thigh and scratches his scalp. “Do it for me, though. Let me kiss you some more before you make me come.”

Bucky falls forward and finds Steve’s mouth. They kiss, languid and unhurried, as Bucky’s body adjusts to Steve’s penetration; Bucky gives just as good as he gets, never one to back down from a fight if it’s with Steve, especially if it’s with Steve, and he’s so lost to it, to the way that Steve is fucking his mouth with his tongue, that he sobs brokenly when Steve grabs his hips, lifts him up, and drops him back down.

“Steve!”

Steve leans back again, looking at Bucky’s face in the dim light from the lamp in the corner. “Yeah, sweetheart?” He cocks his head to the side. The skin around Bucky’s lips is red from Steve’s beard. That territorial mark makes Steve swell with boastful pride. “Ride me. Work for it.”

Bucky, with a gleam of determination in his dark blue eyes, snarls a grin. He presses his chest against Steve’s and digs his fingers in Steve’s hair; he holds Steve still as he kisses Steve the way that Steve was kissing him, wet and messy with tongue and teeth and nips that are soothed with sucks, as he begins a heavy swivel of his hips.

He rubs his bare, hairless chest against Steve’s, like he wants to be burned there, too, and that, along with Bucky rising suddenly and falling just as quickly back on his cock, elicits a high-pitched whine from so deep in Steve’s lungs that he is breathless afterward. He drags his mouth from Bucky’s and grabs Bucky’s cheeks with his hands, holding him still and pressing their foreheads together. He breathes in Bucky’s air, avaricious and selfish, wanting to be full, wanting to be filled with everything that is Bucky.

Bucky rides Steve hard and fast, rutting his cock against Steve’s stomach on each curve down. Steve’s stomach is a smeared mess of precum; Steve reaches for Bucky’s cock and strokes it in time with Bucky’s movements, thumbing into the slit just the way Bucky likes, because he wants Bucky to come at the same time he does and that is not too far off.

The sensation builds and mounts. Steve comes with a hoarse cry, burying his face in the heat of Bucky’s throat, and Bucky follows a half second later, throwing his head back and wailing, and the neighbors are going to know that whoever the big man is that Bucky brought home from the bar fucked him good, so good, and Steve doesn’t have it in him to care, really.

Bucky kisses Steve. The afterglow rises and falls, like the high tides, and, still, Bucky continues to kiss Steve. It’s light and feathery, the desperation having been tamed for the moment. Bucky’s body is shaking, like a feeble leaf in the stiff late-fall breeze, and Steve wraps him tight, holds him close, and lets Bucky plunder his mouth for as long as he wants.

Funnily enough, it’s Steve who has to pull away to catch his breath. “Are you okay?” he asks, ever attentive, trying to catch Bucky’s eyes with his.

Bucky nods and smiles, absolutely fucked out of his mind. “I’m perfect,” he slurs beautifully, wonderfully. “You’re amazing.”

Steve blushes. “Well.” He shakes his head and kisses Bucky’s shoulder. “I love you.” It’s like a weight has been lifted off of Steve’s chest; to say those words, after so long without, is liberating.

Bucky titters at the three little words and grabs Steve’s head. “Steve.” He touches Steve’s face, dragging his fingertips across Steve’s brows, nose, lips, chin, like he’s committing Steve to memory. Steve stays still, letting Bucky look his fill, letting Bucky look as much as his heart desires. “I love you, too.” Bucky laughs against Steve’s lips.

Carefully, Bucky lifts up and off Steve’s half-hard cock. His legs are unsteady when he stands; his knees threaten to buckle but Steve reaches out and offers his hands for balance.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.” Bucky nods, and then his eyes go wide and he looks down. “Oh.”

Steve’s gaze falls, too, and he sees a fat drop of his cum rolling down the inside of Bucky’s leg; mesmerized, Steve catches the dollop on his finger before it gets to far and brings it up to Bucky’s mouth, pressing inside. Bucky moans haughtily and sucks Steve’s finger in his mouth.

Bucky lets Steve’s finger fall from his mouth with a pop; he smiles, boyish and charming, and tugs Steve up. “Come on.” He pulls Steve toward the bedroom. Steve follows, lighter than air.

* * *

The fourth time comes just before dawn, when Steve has crawled back into bed after his morning paper route and the light shining through the window and sifting through the patterned curtains is still dark blue. Bucky, naked and small and preening for Steve’s attention, sidles back, pressing his ass against Steve’s prick. He grabs Steve’s arm, digging his fingernails into the muscle with an acuteness that Steve can almost taste.

“Steve,” he breathes, low and messy, and it’s urgent and needy, and the desire that pools in Steve’s gut is rapid. “Steve, please. I want you inside me.”

The words make Steve’s heart stutter, as if he’s tripped over a crack in the sidewalk.

Steve hauls their bodies as close as possible and reaches down and spreads Bucky’s cheeks, dipping two of his fingers inside of Bucky. He’s still stretched, mostly, and he’s hot and sticky inside, full of cum. With a breathless moan, Steve pushes forward till his cock catches on Bucky’s rim once, two times, before pressing inside, not stopping until he’s all the way in.

Bucky nearly comes when Steve bottoms out. Steve puts his face against the nape of Bucky’s neck and laughs.

“You’re on a hair trigger, baby, almost coming as soon as I get my cock in you.” Steve puts one arm under Bucky’s cheek on the pillow and curls upward, combing his fingers through Bucky’s hair. He kisses Bucky’s skin, from his neck to his shoulder and back again, starting a slow, languid pace. He is in no hurry. “S’like you’re a slut for it.”

Bucky reaches up and finds Steve’s hand with his, interlacing their fingers. He’s holding so tight, half gone already, and Steve smears his smile into Bucky’s skin. “Steve.” His voice is high and broken. He sounds like he’s about to cry, and Steve wishes so badly that he would. He misses the taste of Bucky’s salty, succulent tears on his tongue.

“Are you?” he whispers, nailing forward. Bucky’s body fits him like they were molded for one another centuries before they were born. He pulls Bucky’s hair away from his ear and bites, gently, just enough to hear Bucky whimper, on the lobe. “Are you a little slut for it, Bucky?”

Bucky nods, fast and hard, clipping Steve in the chin harshly. “Yes!” he cries, stretching back and grabbing the meat of Steve’s ass, urging him along harder, faster, because he can take it. “Yes, Steve. I’m a slut for it.”

Pleased, Steve hums and nuzzles at Bucky’s cheek, relishing the hot blush that burns the tip of his nose. “My pretty little slut,” he says, so quiet that only Bucky can hear.

The moan Bucky lets out is so loud it rattles the walls, sinking beneath Steve’s flesh and digging into his bones. “Like that,” he says, near-silent; his body is as tight as a drawn bowstring. He arches his back, and Steve slides in incredibly deeper. “You’re so big.” Bucky is wrecked. He searches for Steve’s hand, finding it on his hip, and pulls it upward. “Feel.”

Steve lets Bucky press his hand to his stomach, splashing his fingers. His hand is so large it nearly covers the expanse. He fucks in and out, in and out, and the shift of his dick pressing into Bucky’s body moves Bucky forward, a bit. He can feel the movement of himself inside of Bucky and, if he concentrates, he can imagine the feel of his cock reaching so far inside Bucky that it’s in his guts, rearranging his insides to fit Steve the best.

Abruptly, he thinks of pumping Bucky so full of cum that somehow, some way, he becomes pregnant. He thinks of Bucky, swollen and fatter than he is now, naked and lazily unfurled on their big bed at home, waiting for Steve with a twinkle in his eye because he knows Steve will do anything for him. It’s impossible, of course it’s impossible, but, still, he likes it, likes the thought of it, so much that he’s cradling Bucky’s stomach like there’s already a baby growing there.

“S’like you’re in my tummy.”

“ _Bucky._ ”

Bucky giggles, angelic even with Steve’s dick stuck so far up his ass he’s surely being ruined.

Steve curls his body around Bucky’s, drawing out and sinking back in smoothly. It feels good, so good, like the dawn after the longest night; Bucky’s tight, wet heat, gnawing at Steve’s senses so wonderfully that he is quickly falling apart. He feels the tethers holding him back begin to come loose.

He buries himself deep inside Bucky with each trust, setting a pace that has Bucky arching and panting, mewling, fragmented and cracked. Pleasure nestles and settles at the bottom of Steve’s spine.

“Steve,” Bucky moans, and the sound of his name falling off Bucky’s tongue, slurred with the thickness of elusive sensation, makes Steve ache, the way that Bucky sounds so lost with Steve against him, around him, into him. He presses kisses all over Bucky’s neck and shoulder, covering Bucky’s skin with words that belong only to them.

“Come on,” he says, haggard, and Bucky reaches down and takes himself in hand. It takes a few tugs, mismatched to Steve’s thrusting, and then he’s coming, squeezing around Steve.

“That’s it.” Steve kisses Bucky’s cheek, jaw, chin, in awe at the freedom he’s found with this man in his arms. “That’s it, Buck, baby.” It takes every bit of self-control Steve has not to follow Bucky down into the throes of release, instead fucking Bucky through every second of it.

When Bucky’s whine turns from one of pleasure to pain, Steve lets go. He pushes in, hard, and mouths at Bucky’s temple as he comes, too.

* * *

Hours later, Steve is roused from his doze to the feel of fingertips ghosting across the deep dips next to his hips. He huffs and rolls over onto his belly, rubbing his face in the pillow, warm from the sun that’s meandering inside the tiny bedroom. He blinks open his eyes and looks at Bucky, who’s awake, bright-eyed and beautiful, and smiles.

“Hi.”

Bucky smiles, too, prettier than anything. “Hi, Steve.”

Steve reaches for Bucky’s neck. He pulls Bucky into a kiss; Bucky’s mouth tastes nasty with stale sleep, but Steve doesn’t care and licks deep, cradling Bucky’s head in his big hand. There’s no heat behind the touch—that fire is now simmering embers after the events of last night and early this morning—and it’s nice. The serenity is exhilarating.

When they pull apart, Bucky’s grinning, higher on one side than the other, and he giggles as he scoots his chest into Steve’s side. His fingers tickle across the expanse of Steve’s back, and Steve sighs, shutting his eyes and drifting. He lets his mind wander.

Flash images of their couplings throughout the night dance behind his closed lids; the lust it coils in the pit of his stomach and the small of his back is easily ignored, though. He’s old, he’s forty, and the closeness that fucking brings isn’t the only intimacy that Steve craves. Bucky seems to be sated, too, at the moment.

There’s a heavy lethargy to his bones that makes him weighted with satisfaction. He could stay here forever, he thinks, lazing in the sunspots and delighting in the ease of affection. Bucky fell into Steve so readily, so comfortably, like it’s something he’s always wanted; dwelling on the semantics of their history and this chance encounter is nothing but a headache waiting to happen and Steve refuses to go down that line of thinking, promising to instead enjoy the time he has with Bucky. However long that is.

Bucky presses his lips against the top of Steve’s shoulder. “What’re you thinking about?”

Steve flutters his eyes; seeing Bucky smiling, warm from the sun and content with their familiarity, is all that he’s ever wanted. “You,” he answers. “You’re so perfect.”

Bucky’s eyes widen. “Steve—”

Steve kisses him again to shut up him. Bucky throws his arms around Steve’s neck and worms himself into Steve’s chest, kissing him back. This is easy—easier than anything, everything. Steve’s mind is an empty plate when he’s kissing Bucky; all that’s there is the palpable feeling of loving and being loved.

Steve kisses Bucky on the nose. “Let’s stay in bed.”

“All day?”

“Unless you’ve got somewhere to be.”

Bucky wiggles further into Steve’s embrace. Steve kisses the top of Bucky’s head. That’s answer enough.

“I’m hungry,” Bucky says into Steve’s chest. He presses his palm against the steady thud of Steve’s heart and grins dazzlingly up at Steve. “I’m going to make breakfast. Want anything?”

With a bit of trouble, Bucky extracts himself from Steve’s arms and stands. He’s naked, on display; there’s redness on his neck and chest from Steve’s beard, and there’s a few crusty lines of dried semen on the tender flesh between his legs. They need a bath. Maybe they’ll take it together.

Steve reaches out and pinches Bucky’s pert ass cheek, grinning rakishly up at Bucky when he yelps and throws a haughty, put-upon glare Steve’s way. “Bring it to me in bed, will you?”

“I let you fuck me and now I’m your housewife, huh?”

“Mm. I’ll even get you get you a pretty outfit.”

“Pervert.” He bends down to kiss Steve’s forehead. “I’ll be right back.”

Steve, enamored, watches Bucky as he leaves. He isn’t limping or walking differently, which is good, but the permanent tint of faint pink on his cheeks and the easy, giddy smile he flashes so carelessly are both telltale signs that he has been well taken care of.

He flips onto his back and spreads out, stretching his arms above his head till his body’s trembling and he feels loose and malleable. The aftershocks of their shared pleasure are still sparking through his system, and he basks in the subsequent flickers of sensation as he warms in the sunspot.

He raises his hand. The sun glints off his ring, making the jewels shine so bright and ethereal he knows Bucky can use the light to always find his way back home.

He loves this ring. He loves _his_ ring. And he wishes, truly, that he could go to Winnie Barnes and thank her, thank her from the bottom of his heart, for deeming him worthy of being the carrier of Bucky’s love and passing the ring on to him. He knows she would have been delighted to know that the person Bucky decided to give her ring to wears it with gratifying joy.

He looks at the ring on his other hand, then. It’s been three days—this is the start of the fourth—and he very nearly forgot about the ring on his finger. It looks different, somewhat, like it’s less… shiny, in a sense. He looks for the sparkling jewel he saw the first day and finds that it is now gone from the groove it was in.

Curiously, the two jewels after the first are gone, too, like they dazzled and then faded, evaporating into nothing now that it’s all used up. The fourth jewel, however, is still present and brilliant, like the first was on the day that he landed in the kitchen. The ones after are dim but noticeably there.

He purses his lips. How odd. The jewels are glinting and then disappearing to the right, like the hands of a clock. He thinks that’s rather peculiar, something he has never seen before, and then it dawns.

“Oh.”

It is a clock. It’s his countdown. Each jewel represents a day; the jewel glows on its day and then, when that day is over, it vanishes, leaving a small crater behind. He’s got twenty-six days left, it seems.

Of course, he could be wrong. He could be very wrong, but he doesn’t think he is. It makes sense; as strange as it is, the explanation feels correct.

He laughs. He can’t wait to tell Bucky, but Bucky is in the kitchen, like a good housewife, so he shuts his eyes and rolls over onto his belly. The sun is dancing across his bare back, warm and comfortable, and he goes to sleep like that, in the bed he and Bucky fucked in just hours ago. It smells like them, like home. It’s all he’s ever wanted.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Tell me about the honeymoon,” Bucky says when he pulls back from the kiss. He blinks, indolent and sated. “Where’d you go?” 
> 
> Steve turns onto his back and folds his arms behind his head. Like this, he’s stretched out, naked from head to toe; Bucky isn’t shy as his eyes trail along Steve’s body, slow and thorough. Bucky’s eyes dilate—he likes what he sees. Steve preens. 
> 
> “It was like this,” he answers. Bucky tickles his fingertips across Steve’s chest, tugging easily at the smattering of dark hair there. “Kind of.” 
> 
> Bucky flicks one of Steve’s nipples. “Kind of?”

The following day, on a spontaneous decision settled with Bucky face down and ass up in bed, taking Steve’s cock like he’s starving for it, Bucky borrows his family’s vehicle and he and Steve drive out of the city, up north, until it’s mowed farmland in every direction. They stop in a small town and get a cold glass of lemonade and directions to the nearest swimming hole; Bucky leaves two swooning young girls behind, but he reaches across the bench seat and grabs Steve’s hand and smiles at him when they pull off the paved road and onto a dirt path lined on either side by fading green trees that stretch up and above, canopies grasping for one another. The sun, high in the sky and such a bright yellow it’s white, shines through, leading them to a clearing that looks straight out of the tales of faeries Steve’s mother used to tell him before bed.

They unpack the car, gathering the things for their picnic and making the journey along a beaten-down path toward the crepitating creek. Steve finds a tree that offers suitable shade and spreads the blanket down beneath the tendrils of the weeping willow as Bucky kicks his shoes away, removes his clothes, and takes off running for the water, entirely naked and shimmering beneath the light of the sun.

He splashes in, hollering at the apparent chill, and Steve throws his head back and laughs like a little kid. He’s reminded, then, that Bucky _is_ a kid—he’s twenty-one, an adult, sure, technically, but nothing more than a big kid, truly, and Steve feels a quick stab of bittersweet guilt that his husband isn’t here to share this moment with him but Bucky is here and that’s okay, that’s good, too. They’re the same, after all, in the sense that Steve from before the war is the same as Steve now. 

“Are you comin’ in?” Bucky calls after he resurfaces; the water flattens his curls on his forehead and he swipes them off with a big grin. “The water’s fine.” 

Steve shakes his head and motions to the blanket. “I’m not in the mood to get wet just yet.”

Bucky huffs so loud Steve can hear it over the sound of the running creek. “Don’t be such an old man, Steve!” he calls, and his voice carries all over, all around, like they’re in an amphitheater. “I know you’re forty but that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun!”

“I can have just as much fun reading under this tree as I can in that water.”

“C’mon, old man.” Bucky flips up on his back; his soft cock, nestled in a bed of dark curls, sticks out above the surface of the water. “You’ve got a pretty, naked boy begging you to come swimming with him. Are you really going to ignore him?”

“So you’re vain now, huh?”

“Not vain.” Bucky flashes Steve a grin and moves his hand over his dick before flipping over and treading closer to the bank. “You call me pretty. If you say it, then it has to be true. You never lie.”

Steve sighs. “Bucky.”

“Come get me.” He laughs and swims away, kicking up water so high it nearly splashes on the blanket—their only one, too. “Or are you too old?”

Steve, at the sultry taunt in Bucky’s tone, rolls his eyes and shrugs out of his clothing, mumbling, “I’ll show you old,” as he stalks toward the water. It’s chilly, just a bit, and he hurries to submerge himself, ducking under the surface to cool his hot cheeks. Bucky’s a bit away from him, but Steve swims over leisurely, in no hurry at all. 

Bucky cackles when Steve’s close and darts away; his laughter mixes with the wind and rustles the leaves on the trees and the utter tranquility that washes over Steve feels like a christening, like an introduction into a reality of equanimity so similar to the truth he shares with his husband in the future that he can hardly discern one actuality from the next.

It feels almost as if it’s been this way forever, even long before the two of them realized how cavernous their love for one another was.

He treads toward Bucky, grinning so big his cheeks hurt. They play together for a few moments, ducking and diving and moving away from one another; Steve chases Bucky, lurking in the water like a jilted mermaid about to strike to drag their lover to the deep, and then Bucky, keen for attention, turns the tide and begins to swim after Steve.

They mess about in the water for a long while. The sun is high above them, hot and ardent, beating down on the tops of their shoulders and neck; Steve sees Bucky begin to redden and he knows he’s probably burned, too, and he coaxes Bucky from the water with kisses and touches until they’re both laying on the blanket beneath the shade of the willow tree, sipping lemonade and munching on the bread and cheese and berries.

The breeze smells of green creek water and clean, crunchy grass beneath their feet; August is still sweltering, even for it to be as late in the month as it is, but there’s a bit of fading color to the leaves that promise an early autumn as soon as the heat recedes.

Steve is warm from the sun and mitigated by the quick, effortless way he was accepted into Bucky’s arms. Bucky didn’t question anything—he took in his fill of the ring on Steve’s finger, and that was it, and maybe there’s some things Steve ought to unpack there, but he can’t find it in him to care yet. Everything is good, right now; he sees no reason to look for something to obscure the joy that he has found.

Bucky thumps Steve on the chest. “What’re you thinking about?” he asks, sweet and easy.

Steve looks at him. He’s laying on his stomach and eating the berries one at a time, so very near Steve that the heat between their bodies is mingling; his lips are stained by the juice of the fruit just a bit, and it looks like lipstick, and Steve wants to kiss it off. He smiles. “I’m thinking of you.”

Bucky’s cheeks turn the same color as the berries. “Well, then.” He ducks his head, trying to hide his smile, but Steve’s already seen it. “I hope it’s good thoughts.”

“It’s always good thoughts.”

Bucky’s cheeks, already pink with the heat, turn red at Steve’s smile—and how Bucky, who only hours ago was whining that he wasn’t going to be fucked against the door, can blush so innocently is beyond Steve, but he loves it. It’s absolutely precious.

Bucky flips onto his side, facing Steve, and rests his head on his hand. “What’s your husband like?”

Steve laughs a bit and turns onto his side, too, so they’re mirror images of one another. “Like you,” he answers. “Older, just as soft and delicate as you are now. He wakes up early and likes to read in the evenings before bed.” He reaches out to flick a piece of grass off Bucky’s shoulder, fingertips lingering on the faint smattering of freckles there. “We spend a lot of time outside, so he’s always got freckles on his shoulders.” Bucky wouldn’t burn so badly if he didn’t wear sundresses as much as he does. “He likes to wear pretty things, too.”

“Pretty things?” Bucky’s lashes flutter.

“Dresses, skirts, panties. My favorite dress of his is this green thing he wears on evenings where we take walks through the meadow.” Steve’s smile grows as the memory of the first night he saw Bucky in the dress surfaces; he held Bucky so close, got on his knees and shoved his face up under the skirt and ate Bucky until he was crying. And when Bucky stripped it off, laid bare on the blanket, and spread his legs—Steve never knew a peace, such a profound restfulness, that ran as deep as he did in that moment. “It hits the top of his knees and falls off his shoulder and has yellow daisies all over. He puts his hair up, but some pieces fall out and curls on his neck. I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

“I… I have a dress,” Bucky says, suddenly shy, averting his eyes. “Tucked in the closet.”

“I know,” Steve says, sweetening his voice. “You told me. We were in a farmhouse in Europe once, and you saw a dress that was left out on the counter, and you wore it.” Steve remembers that day so vividly that he’s forgotten Bucky hasn’t lived it yet; he knows what it’s like to be forced into a situation he isn’t comfortable about, so he changes the subject. “Sometimes it’s hard to get him to laugh, though, but when he does… it’s like watching a flower bloom in the middle of a thunderstorm.”

Bucky gives Steve a gentle smile, appreciative of the change back to the original topic. “Why is it hard for him to laugh?” he asks, pursing his lips. 

Steve wants to kiss him, but he refrains from doing so. “You and I went through a lot to get where we are now,” he answers, picking his words so they’re easy on Bucky’s ears. “He went through some very not nice things.”

Bucky’s timid smile turns into a sour frown. “‘Not nice things,’” he repeats with a tart tone. “I’m not a child that needs to be sheltered from trauma, Steve. There’s no need to placate me.”

“I know. And I’m not trying to.” If he’s placating anyone, it’s himself—he’s not purposefully disregarding the significance that Bucky’s stolen time spent brainwashed by nazis has on their lives, but he doesn’t wish to discuss it. It’ll only fester and spoil this lightness. “I don’t want to ruin the time we have together with old war stories. He’s happy with me, though. He tells me everyday.”

Bucky’s harsh expression softens. “You’re so good to him.”

“I love him.” Steve brushes his fingers through Bucky’s curly hair, pushing it back from his face. “I love you.”

Bucky smiles. “I bet he misses you so much. I miss my Steve.”

“I miss him, too.” So much. “And wherever Steve is, I know he misses you, too.” He reaches for Bucky and intertwines their fingers, pulling Bucky’s hand up to press a kiss to his knuckles. It’s strange not seeing his mother’s wedding right on Bucky’s hand, but this is better than he ever thought it could be. “Nearly a century separates us, but one thing is still the same—there is no version of me that does not love you.”

Bucky nearly swoons and lurches forward; he catches Steve’s lips with his in a soft, quick kiss. Bucky tastes like sun and berries, and Steve smiles against his lips, curling his hand in Bucky’s hair to hold him there for a moment.

“Tell me about the honeymoon,” Bucky says when he pulls back from the kiss. He blinks, indolent and sated. “Where’d we go?”

Steve turns onto his back and folds his arms behind his head. Like this, he’s stretched out, naked from head to toe; Bucky isn’t shy as his eyes trail along Steve’s body, slow and thorough. Bucky’s eyes dilate—he likes what he sees. Steve preens.

“It was like this,” he answers. Bucky tickles his fingertips across Steve’s chest, tugging easily at the smattering of dark hair there. “Kind of.”

Bucky flicks one of Steve’s nipples. “Kind of?”

Steve sucks in a tight breath, glaring at Bucky. Bucky, the enthralling cad, grins. “Yeah,” he says, watching the pattern of Bucky’s fingers as they trace along his chest, from nipple to nipple, drawing arbitrary shapes here and there. “The village we live in is small, surrounded by green hills of rolling grasses and fields of flowers. We built a house on the outside, tucked between two hills and with by trees all around. The yard is clear, though, except for the few trees in the backyard that Bucky likes to decorate with lights, and there’s a creek, too, like this one. We got married in the front yard, and we honeymooned in the backyard. We skinny dipped and ate sandwiches.”

“Did we really?” Bucky asks, his tone heavy with disbelief and exasperated mirth.

“Yeah.” Steve grabs Bucky’s meandering hand and interlaces their fingers. He misses this—holding hands with his husband, with Bucky. It feels as if he won’t be able to survive without the tender touch, even though he isn’t sure he deserves it all the time. He doesn’t care—he’s selfish and he takes it every single time. “I asked Bucky if he wanted to go anywhere, and he said it’s hard to answer that when he’s been almost everywhere. He said he wanted to start our life in the one place that nobody had touched but us.”

Bucky lets go of a crooked grin that Steve steals and tucks away deep in his heart. “And that was your backyard.”

“Our home.”

Bucky scoffs. “He sounds dramatic.”

“ _You_ are dramatic,” Steve reminds him fondly. He wouldn’t have Bucky any other way. “And I love you in spite of it.”

Bucky’s lopsided smirks melts into a sweet-tempered smile. “I can’t believe it, you know,” he says offhandedly, almost to himself. He turns their intertwined hands in the air and stares at Steve’s ring. “That we’re married, I mean. I never thought.” There’s a rampant mystification in his tone. “We married each other.”

“We did.” A softness spreads all over Steve’s body; gooseflesh erupts on his skin, even in the muggy heat and thick humidity. “You wore the prettiest dress. You made fun of me because I was barefoot and wearing a lot of gold jewelry. I cried at the altar. All of our friends were there. The trees were yellow and purple and red and orange, and you held me close and whispered your vows in my ear. It was one of the best days of my life.”

Bucky hums. “When did we happen?”

At the question, innocent and guiltless as it is, Steve is tossed back to the middle of a war. He remembers blood, and mud and ash and charred skin hanging on to viscid bone; he remembers Bucky taking his hand and pulling him away and shoving him in a bath and washing him clean and kissing his split knuckles, and his aching shoulders, and his cheeks, and the tears falling from his eyes, and then his mouth, and before Steve knew it they were huddled beneath the quilts of the half-destroyed house they were seeking shelter in, and Bucky was swearing that he would never let Steve be lost to this war and Steve was holding Bucky like a lifeline, like he would be lost in between the vibrating atoms of reality if he let go.

But then he didn’t reach Bucky in time, and he fell off a train, and landed into the hands of people who terrorized him for decades, and Steve slept, frozen, in ice, numb and half-dead to it all. And then he woke up, and fought and fought and fought, and fought Bucky, fought for Bucky, fought to get Bucky back, and now they’re married, happy, retired with a home they created for one another.

It’s not a particularly exciting story, the one they share. But it is _their_ story.

“Later,” Steve says. “I’ll tell you later.”

“Okay.” There’s a flash of disappoint on Bucky’s face, but he wipes it away soon, seemingly understanding that Steve isn’t ready to bare that part of himself just yet. “What’d you two do on your honeymoon?”

“Each other,” Steve replies, cheekily, shrugging off the tinge of panic and pain that hangs heavy on the ends of his hair. There’s no place here for that kind of discomfort. “All night.”

Bucky gasps, feigning shock at the debauchery. His hair is fluffy, almost dry from their swim; he looks so beautiful, like a cherub. “Tell me.”

Steve laughs. “I didn’t know you were into voyeurism.”

“Hush.” Bucky pulls his hand from Steve’s and thumps Steve on his tummy, not unkindly. “Tell me.”

Steve gets comfortable once again. “He sucked my dick first, and I came in his hair. He keeps it long, and it’s so pretty. It still curls, like yours does now. He was so mad at me.” From the corner of his eye, he sees Bucky touch his curls; it’s such a mundane reaction that warms Steve more than the sun ever could. “And then I fingered him for—hours, it felt, and he cried because I wouldn’t let him come. And then I turned him on his belly, and pulled his ass into the air, and fucked him on my knees. He came three times before I did. And then I kept fucking him till he cried because it hurt so good.”

A deluge of ghost sensations glister across Steve’s body. He recalls, vividly, kissing the tears from Bucky’s cheeks, loving the taste, and telling him that there’s no amount of begging in the world that will give him the permission to come on Steve’s fingers. The way Bucky tilted his head back against the pillows, allowing Steve room to nuzzle into his throat and fall asleep after, in the purple-blue-pink predawn light, in the scent of them and honeysuckle, is a moment full of so much unbridled love that it leaves Steve feeling simultaneously shattered and settled whenever he thinks about it.

“Fuck.” Bucky puts a hand on his cock. “And then what?”

Steve sighs as the memories trickle in, like the slow movement of the creek. “I plugged him up, and he held my cock in his mouth for a while. He’s very particular about wasting my cum, and sometimes he gets insecure if I’m not careful to remind him how much he deserves to be full of me.”

“Oh,” Bucky says the words like it’s a whole sentence; Steve looks over at him and sees that he’s almost hard, so pretty nestled in dark curls. He wants to touch, too. “Is it always like that? When we fuck, I mean.” 

Steve blinks. “It’s always good when we make love, Bucky. Everyday that I get to spend with you is the best day of my life.”

“You’re such sap.” Bucky laughs. The noise seeps into the chirping of the birds, the whistling of the willow branches waving in the wind. It’s unnatural but innate and carnal. Steve puts his palm on Bucky’s soft chest to feel the sound under his fingertips. “I can’t imagine what your vows must’ve been like.”

Steve remembers. He’ll never forget the look in Bucky’s eyes when Steve finally gave words to the devotion that runs deep between the two of them like the endless spread of the sky above. “They were nice.”

“You know what else is nice? You touching me.”

Steve frowns. “I am touching you,” he says, curling his fingers in so his hand is making a fist on Bucky’s chest. It’s so big, his fist; he could break Bucky so easily, without even having to think about it. That terrifies him.

“No.” Bucky wets his lips; his tongue is dark pink and Steve wants it in his mouth, down his throat. “Like this.” He pulls Steve’s hand to his cock.

Steve cups Bucky’s pretty cock in his palm, fondling the precious weight. He loves it—Bucky is smooth and velvet-soft, hot to the touch but so delicate. “What else?”

Bucky watches the way Steve pets his cock, lips parted in avid rapture. “Your attention,” he breathes, moving his gaze back up to Steve’s. “I want all of it.”

“Is that all?” Steve moves Bucky onto his back and rolls over atop him, spreading Bucky’s legs for a comfortable fit; they’re wet from sweat and it allows Steve to slide his body against Bucky’s with the best kind of friction. He adjusts himself, pressing his cock up beside Bucky’s. Bucky is so small next to him. “Is this okay?”

“Yeah.” Bucky scratches his hands up Steve’s back and grips his shoulders; Steve, spurred on by the utter trust and love in Bucky’s wide-open gaze, lowers his hips into the cradle of Bucky’s thighs. He begins to rut into Bucky, slowly, enamored with the way his cock looks sliding beside Bucky’s. “Just—oh, like that.” Bucky groans and arches his back, obscene and stunning. “Fuck.”

Steve grins. “Anything else?”

Bucky grabs Steve’s cheeks in his hands and curls his fingers into Steve’s beard. He holds Steve’s face like he’s priceless, timeless. “Make me come.”

Steve drops a kiss on the tip of Bucky’s nose. It’s warm; he’s going to burn. “You put a lot of pressure on an old man like me,” he says, puffing a bit of laughter into Bucky’s face before kissing him quickly. “I’ll do my best.”

Bucky brings his legs up and wraps them loosely around Steve’s waist, thumping his heels against the top of Steve’s ass. “I know you can do it,” he praises, pulling Steve back down for another kiss. “Nobody makes me come like you do.”

“Hmm.”

“You’ve ruined me for anybody else. I hope you know that.”

“Good.” Steve rests his elbows on either side of Bucky’s head, upping the pace of his hips. His cock drags against Bucky’s; their sweat mingles, and it’s hot and slick and heat, so good and so filthy. Just how Bucky likes it. “I like knowing I’m the best you’ll ever have.”

Bucky barks out a laugh that’s swallowed by Steve’s mouth. He kisses hard, licks deep; Bucky meets him in the middle, giving just as much as he’s taking, and they move together, mouth to mouth and chest to chest and cock to cock, and Steve feels zinging bolts of lightning dart all across his body.

He’s heavy. He’s weightless. He’s on fire and he’s ice cold; he’s wide awake and on the verge of falling into a darkness that feels like sleep. He’s everything and nothing all at once—Bucky makes him feel like he can fight the world, rise up in a pile of ashes and turn everything to stone.

The sweat clinging to their bodies provides ample slick so the friction firing between them isn’t more flame than reprieve. Bucky’s nothing but nerve endings, it seems: his kisses are heady breaths puffed into Steve’s mouth and his legs, wrapped tight around Steve’s hips, are twitching with shocks of galvanizing sensation.

Steve is in awe. Bucky is stunning.

Bucky tears his mouth from Steve’s and whines so loud it startles the birds nesting above. Steve stuffs his face in Bucky’s throat and mouths at Bucky’s collarbone, biting into the flesh hard enough to leave marks. Bucky’s on the edge; he’s on a hair-trigger, being so young and moderately inexperienced, and though Steve knows the likelihood of coming himself this way is quite improbable, he knows Bucky can orgasm just from rutting together like virulent animals.

Bucky meets him thrust for thrust, fluid and wet and squelchy. “Want you to fuck me,” he hisses on a particularly hard downward push from Steve, eyes nearly rolling back into his head. “Fuck me here.”

“No.”

Bucky mewls. “Why?” he asks, pitifully fucked out of his mind, and doesn’t wait for an answer, instead lifting his hips just a bit and moving his hand under his ass. His brows furrow. Steve curses. 

“Stop that,” Steve commands, fucking down so harshly that it knocks Bucky’s arched back into the blanket. “I didn’t bring slick. Stop that or I won’t let you come.”

Tears begin to gather in the corners of Bucky’s eyes. “Please,” he begs, pretty and red-cheeked, wide-eyed; big, fat alligator tears swell and fall down his chubby cheeks. “Please, Steve.”

“Hush.” Steve bends down and licks the tears up with his tongue. They taste so good—like salty trust and love, if that’s even a thing. “I’m not going to fuck you dry.”

Bucky squirms, distressed, and nearly bucks Steve off, disrupting the strict rhythm he’s set for them. “ _Steve_.”

Steve grunts and swears. “Quit or I’ll hold you down.” Bucky wiggles again and Steve finds both of his wrists, dragging them up above his head; with one hand, he holds Bucky down, plenty strong enough to keep him still, and the other trails along the arced planes of Bucky’s body. He’s so stretched, so taut in this position—Steve wants to tickle him, wants to paint him, wants to make him cry for hours. “Is this okay?”

“Yes.” He nods, cries, and Steve eats those tears up, too.

“Thank you.” He screws menacingly into the cradle of Bucky’s thighs. The sound of skin slapping against skin permeates the air. He hopes Bucky doesn’t bruise, but if he does Steve will take care of him, will always take care of him. “Thank you for giving me your tears, honey.”

Bucky sobs, tugging at Steve’s hold; when he finds that he will not be able to break free easily he arches so sharply that Steve is worried for a moment.

Bucky says, “Steve,” and Steve hears it between broken noises. And, “So good,” and, “‘m close,” and, “Love this,” and something similar to, “Fuck,” but it’s all garbled, breathless cries that blend and meld.

Steve leans up onto his knees so he can watch Bucky’s cock jerk as he comes all over his chubby tummy. It’s a sight; Bucky’s eyes have never been so deliciously hooded before. He cries like a newborn baby, fresh from the womb and as mad as a nest of wasps. Steve, surprisingly stupefied, plays in the mess of cum on Bucky’s stomach, smearing and rubbing and pressing into the aftershocks the make Bucky’s fat convulse so wonderfully.

Steve laughs, joyful and only half sane, and drops back down on top of Bucky. “Shh, shh,” he soothes, letting go of Bucky’s wrist and cupping Bucky’s face with his hands. He wipes away Bucky’s tears, amazed that he’s so loved, so trusted, and gets to see this side of Bucky—even now, before their flourishing relationship even developed beyond two skinned-knee kids running from whatever authority tries to control them. “I’ve got you.”

For a long moment, the two of them hold one another, gasping for breath. Steve didn’t come, as he presumed, but his arousal is second to making sure Bucky is okay, making sure that Bucky isn’t overwhelmed and is coming down nice and easy and gently.

He kisses Bucky’s face all over; eyelids, nose, forehead crinkles, dimpled chin all fall to Steve’s adoring affection. Bucky grips him like he’s scared he’ll disappear if he doesn’t. Steve lets him, knowing that crescent-shapes scratched into his skin—that’ll heal in moments—is a small price to pay in order to ensure Bucky’s bubbling, contagious feel-goodness lasts and does not sour.

“I didn’t even know I’d want something like that.”

“What?” Steve pets a bit of hair off Bucky’s forehead. “Dry?”

“Yeah. I’ve never done it before.”

Steve’s lips quirk. “Maybe it’s just for me.” He and his husband have fucked dry before, after plenty discussion and negotiation—in scene and out. Bucky safe-worded once opposed to Steve’s three times, but they were understanding and kind with one another, and it was one of the most loving fucks the two of them have ever had. “I like it.”

“I bet you do.” Bucky’s smirk is like pure sin. Steve’s wilted desire returns full force and he sits back on his knees. Spread out before him, dirty with cum, Bucky looks like the definition of smugness and euphoria. “I want you inside me again, like before. If you’d let me, I’d turn over and open myself up for you, let you watch.”

“Later, at home. This is okay for now.”

“I’m gonna ride you again. I’m gonna take you so deep inside me you’ll never want to leave.”

Steve throws his head back and groans. “The _mouth_ on you, I swear to God.”

Bucky smirks. “What’re you gonna do?”

“I’m gonna shut you up.” He smacks the inside of Bucky’s thigh and digs his fingernails into the immediate print of red. “Get on your knees, ass up. Suck my cock.”

Bucky whimpers, either at Steve’s rough treatment of his tender skin or his callous words, but does as he’s told. He bends low, ass up and spine arched obscenely, and lays his cheek on Steve’s thigh; the dimples at the bottom of his back and the swell of his hips makes him the unsung star of the blue movies of this time. He blinks up at Steve, red-faced and alluring, with a twinkle in his eye, as if he’s daring Steve to make a move.

He’s a little shit. He knows exactly what he’s doing. It’s driving Steve to madness.

Steve brushes his fingers through Bucky’s hair. “You look so good like this,” Steve muses with a smile. He tickles his fingers across Bucky’s face; he wants to cover Bucky in his fingerprints so it isn’t a question who he belongs to.

Bucky raises his hand and puts it on the thigh he isn’t laying on. It’s flesh instead of metal, but Steve is slowly getting accustomed to that difference. “You should see yourself,” he replies, moving into Steve’s touch, seeking affection.

With little strain, Steve bends at the waist and leans over to kiss Bucky on the lips, chastely, before moving back. With one hand, he fists Bucky’s hair, keeping him still; the other presses at the center of Bucky’s chin, in the dimple, so hard that Bucky’s mouth opens. Steve uses his hold on Bucky’s hair to move him, and then he’s feeding the head of his cock into Bucky’s wet, hot mouth.

He stills. He’s big and thick, well-endowed, as they say, and he doesn’t want to push Bucky’s limits or dally in the possibility of harming himself. So he waits, and watches as Bucky’s lids flutter with the struggle to keep his eyes open as his tongue flattens against the underside of Steve’s cock and he suckles the head.

It’s sharp, pointed bliss. Steve’s always been sensitive on the tip; his husband loves it, capitalizes on it by working his tongue into the slit and using his hand to fist the rest of Steve’s length. Steve wonders what Bucky will do to him now.

Bucky moves off, letting Steve drop from his mouth. A thin line of spit reaches from the tip to Bucky’s bottom lip; it breaks and falls, landing on Steve’s balls. He feels debauched, lewdly wondering if Bucky will lick it up if he points it out.

“You’re big.” He coughs, softly, and kisses his spit-smeared lips across Steve’s thigh. “Never taken anyone this big before.”

Steve coos and presses his thumb into Bucky’s mouth. “You can take it, darling,” he says, enthralled as Bucky sucks his thumb even further into his mouth and lathers it with his tongue. He’s hot, burning from the inside out; the sun’s rays have nothing on the heated way that Bucky makes him feel. He finds Bucky’s hand on his thigh and clutches his wrist. “If it gets too much, pinch me here and we’ll stop. Okay?” Bucky nods. Steve smiles, proud of his baby. “Make me come, now.”

Bucky moans like a whore and mouths at Steve’s cock and Steve reaffirms his grip on the back of Bucky’s head and grinds up into the touch. He isn’t greedy or selfish or gluttonous, but he _is_ demanding, and Bucky must catch on quite quick because he drags his tongue along Steve once more before wrapping his lips around the head and suckling.

Steve yelps and shoves up, insistent and rough. Bucky hums a melody, something that Steve recognizes, and for a split second he thinks about singing the lyrics beneath his breath, but then Bucky’s squeezing the base of Steve’s cock and all thoughts other than Bucky’s mouth leave his mind. Bucky looks up at him, because he knows that Steve will ensure his safety with what he’s offering, and Steve is gone, going absolutely stupid with the thrumming promise of an orgasm that’s building in his guts.

Bucky gets his throat fucked, and that is just _breathtaking_ to see, and the noises he makes are pretty lovely, too, echoes of those that are falling from Steve’s lips. He wants to say something—he wants to praise Bucky for being so good to him, he wants to scream at the gods above who ever thought they could keep the two of them apart, he wants to whisper promises of their future in Bucky’s ear because he knows what it holds for them.

He doesn’t. He keeps making noises, sounds similar to that of a dying man swimming toward land. He fucks Bucky’s mouth like he fucked Bucky last night; Bucky sucks, working his jaw till he’s probably aching, saliva slipping from the corners of his lips. His tears return, mingling with the spit on his chin, and Steve, reverential and struck with unfaltering wonder, shelters Bucky’s face in the palm of his hands.

He comes abruptly, like the rapid formation of a storm on the horizon. It’s harsh and he doubles over, holding Bucky on him. He feels the world unhinge and resettle, a little bit more perfect than it was before.

Breathing heavy, he pulls Bucky off him gently. Bucky raises; his lips are pinched tight and his eyes are rimmed with red from the tears that are still following from the corners. He grins, toothily, and holds his tongue out. Steve sees a dollop of his own cum.

That’s quite the sight, he thinks.

He kisses Bucky on the mouth, licking between his lips, behind his teeth. He tastes himself, the salty-sweet tang of his flesh, and the heavy flavor of his cum, and when he pulls back he sees that there’s smudges of jizz all over Bucky’s chin. He’s sure he looks the same. He smiles and tongues over the leftover drops, savoring the mixture of his pleasure on Bucky’s hot skin.

“Oh, Bucky.”

Steve gathers Bucky in his arms and falls onto his back, taking Bucky with him. They lay for a while, smeared on top one another, and come down. The sun blinks from behind fluffy thunderheads up above; the water’s echo follows that of the bullfrogs and fish breaking the surface.

Bucky sighs and runs his fingers through Steve’s chest hair. “I’ve never…” he begins, trailing off. Steve cups the back of his head and keeps him close, pressed into his armpit, as he gathers his thoughts. “I never thought it would be like this.”

“Like what?”

Bucky takes a moment to answer, and when he does, he says, “Like a dream. Like something I didn’t know I would ever want.”

Steve’s heart catches and races. Bucky must hear it, must feel it, because he puts an unadorned kiss to the skin above Steve’s heart. “You’re a dream,” he whispers. “My dream.”

“Idiot.” But Bucky laughs. “I want to stay here forever.”

Steve smiles to himself, thinking of the home he’s built with Bucky in the future. The trees are probably beginning to turn now; he has no doubt that Bucky is spending his evenings outside, listening to the breeze whistle through the leaves, and enjoying a hot cup of cider as he plans the patterns of fabric he’ll use for his next dress or apron or blouse.

He wishes, for a fleeting moment, that he could take Bucky with him to the future—just for a day, just to show him that he does, in fact, get to stay and continue to make a home with Steve in the middle of a valley, where the flower fields stretch on for miles and the sun freckles their shoulders. He wants Bucky to see that he is _happy_ in the future, and wants for nothing at all.

He knows that’s impossible, though. Steve shouldn’t even be here right now; there’s no way of knowing what all trouble he’s caused by allowing himself to indulge this version of his husband. Surely, bringing him to the future will destroy many fragile moments between now and then.

Besides, if he took Bucky, then Steve would be alone. And he knows, first hand, what Steve gets up to when Bucky is gone. They’ve done enough dying for several lifetimes.

“We should head back,” Steve says. The clouds above slink over the sun; they’re big and fluffy, and he can smell the rain. “Before it starts raining.”

Bucky hums diplomatically. He takes hold of Steve’s hand and brings it down. Steve cups Bucky’s half-hard prick in his palm, sheltering the length till it’s full and hot. Bucky looks at him and grins, eyes the color of the angry storm clouds brewing on the horizon. “Take care of me first,” he says, the best kind of temptation, and Steve, laughing like he’s lighter than air, wiggles down to do just that.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You are so strong, in so many ways.” He runs his hands over the curves of Steve’s muscles; they’ve gotten softer, fainter, with a year of semi-retirement, but, still, the flex beneath flesh is a bark that is not telling of its bite. “But you could never hurt me. Not really, in the way that you’re thinking. You don’t have that kind of strength in here to do that to me.” He taps Steve’s chest, right above his heart. “Trust me.”

A week later, coerced into consenting to an additional outing while Bucky was riding him to fulfillment, singing Steve’s praise while punched-out noises of melting pleasure fell from his kiss-swollen lips, Steve agreed to going out with Bucky to another bar after work.

Steve was stupid with sensation, sitting in one of the chairs in the kitchen while Bucky bounced in his lap, nothing more than a vessel to deliver Bucky’s pleasure. Bucky looked so pretty, so wet and so happy, with a dazzling smile that rivaled the brightness of the sun as he chased every zing of electric euphoria, and he couldn’t tell Bucky no.

So he grabbed Bucky’s cheeks in his hands and brought his mouth down. Steve whispered, faintly, “Yes,” before he kissed Bucky’s lips. They came together a few moments after, and cleaned their mess up, giggling and kissing and enjoying the afterglow.

He’s glad he couldn’t, too. He’s glad he couldn’t tell Bucky no in the moment, that is. Because this bar—entirely separate from the one they visited a week before; it’s queer and lively in all corners, and the lighting is a hell of a lot better, too, and Steve can see everyone—makes him feel comfortable and safe and relaxed, like he isn’t looking over his shoulder for bigots, for hateful tenants that see the way he watches Bucky on the dance floor and feel the need to open their mouth to spew hatred.

Instead, not only is he unbothered by the patrons of the bar as he watches Bucky—dance by himself, dance with partners that he grabs off the wall, young and old, married and single, leaving contagious grins and blushing cheeks in his wake—but he’s joined in with his onlooking, too, by anyone who happens to enjoy sitting on the sidelines and observing rather than partaking.

And Steve can’t blame them, really. There’s something so… _otherworldly_ about being able to witness Bucky as he delights in the attention thrown upon him by strangers and friends alike. His cheeks are cherry red and his lips are pansy pink; his eyes are the color of the deepest part of the ocean and his smile, so glorious that it belongs with the stars above, ends up being tossed in Steve’s direction at the end of every dance.

It’s nice. It’s nice to know that Bucky likes people looking at him even though he’s going home with Steve.

That thought settles him, pieces the splinters of his heart back together.

Someone sits to the right of him, bringing him from his thoughts. They smell like roses and vanilla and clean sweat. “Your boy looks good,” they say with a voice smoother than fresh silk against naked skin.

Steve grins. “He does, doesn’t he?” He fiddles with the wedding ring on his finger, pleased and happy. “He spent over an hour getting himself ready for tonight.”

“I can tell.”

Steve looks to his right to see who he’s speaking with. “Leslie,” he says with a smile. She’s wearing a pretty purple blouse with black trousers and suspenders; her hair is slicked back, shorter now than it was last week. She’s gorgeous, soft and hard all at once. “How are you?”

She smiles and tips her drink toward him. “I’m just fine.” Now that he doesn’t feel so itchy at the idea of Bucky with others on the dancefloor, he notices how silken her tone is. He thinks he could listen to her speak for hours. “And I see you’re even better, too. You two must’ve gotten over your problems since the last time I saw you.”

He shrugs, ducking his chin to hide the smile that’s been a permanent fixture to his physique for the last week. “Guess you could say that,” he says. His cheeks kind of hurt, but it’s a good hurt—a happy hurt, grinning so much that his cheeks ache. That’s joy, the kind that you fight for.

Leslie looks at his hands. “Why do you wear that ring?” she asks, curious and not unkind. “Are you married?”

Steve nods. “To him.”

The song—an upbeat, old Irish jig, similar to the ones his mother would hum, that had Steve tapping his feet along earlier—comes to a climactic end. Bucky, always the brightest person in whatever room he’s in, throws his head back and laughs; his partner, a chubby man with ruddy cheeks and besotted grin, twirls him around one last time before letting go. The floor claps for the band before they fall into another jig, and Bucky finds a sandy-haired young woman off the wall to dance with him this time.

Bucky’s hair has long since lost its stiffness from the lavender-smelling pomade he ran through the curls and he’s sweaty, glistening in the lights above. He looks like a faerie, sparkly with magic and cheeks red from the kisses of his concubines. Steve’s heart swells; he was born to love Bucky Barnes, no matter what time he is in. 

“How’d that happen?”

“It’s a long story.”

“One that I would love to hear.”

“Maybe one day.”

“I’ll hold you to that, Steve,” she says, tipping her glass toward him once again before she takes a drink. He can smell the whiskey, aged and half-hot. “I’m sure we’ll have plenty of time to have that chat in the future.”

He lets out a strangled breath and looks at her. “You know who I am,” he says, more of a statement than a question. “How?”

Her eyes flash a bright, brilliant gold. Like sunshine. “With age comes wisdom,” she answers around a laugh, “and I’m old enough to know when someone is lying to me. Besides, you smell like alien magic.”

“The ring—“

“Is magic, yes,” she interrupts. “It’s a fragment of a gem that belonged to my father, centuries ago, and allowed him passage through time. Our world was destroyed and the gem was shattered into shards that scattered all over galaxy.” She tugs a necklace from beneath her blouse; it’s diamond-like, the same shining green color as the stones in Steve’s ring. “The jewels on the ring are a countdown. I’m sure you’ve figured that out.”

He nods. “I suspected.” His brows furrow. “Why did it send me back here, though?”

She sighs, takes another drink of her whiskey. “I don’t have all the answers.” She adjusts her suspenders. “Magic is odd. Trying to understand it is like trying to eat the sun, which has never worked out. I wouldn’t worry about it, though.” She gives him a slightly comforting, magnanimously indulgent grin. “Perhaps you were sent back to this time for a second chance.”

Steve frowns. “A second chance at what?”

She shrugs. “Experiencing it again,” she replies. “Doing it right, doing it better.” She motions for another drink. “This is the beginning of it all, between you and him, is it not? And you know how it ends. Before is a rough draft, and now you can write the final draft because you know how it all ends. Live this life, fleeting as it may be, with Bucky, the way you wish you would have the first time.”

Steve is quiet for a moment, rolling over the new information in his mind. He feels… blessed, in a sense. Leslie—he isn’t sure if that’s her name, but it’s what she introduced herself as, and he isn’t in yhr mood to cross a centuries-old alien—has put him at ease and, with her swift explanation and camaraderie, given him hope.

Maybe she’s right. Maybe the shard of the gem that he touched in 2024 sent him back to 1938 for no reason other than allowing Steve a second time to do it right.

It seems simple. It feels simple, too, in his heart and mind. To just—acknowledge that the shard did this for him, as if he deserved a second chance to experience this with the opportunity to do it the way he should have the first time around. He doesn’t deserve something as _good_ as that.

The ring feels heavy on his finger. He looks at it, soothed by the gleam of the jewels. He thinks, _Thank you_ , and the jewels, all of them at once, those that are left, glimmer, as if they’re replying to him. It makes him chuckle, just a little.

“Why didn’t you say anything the other night?”

She hums. “I didn’t want to scare you, I think,” she replies. Steve wants to tell her that he wouldn’t have been frightened, but he knows that’s a lie—he was teetering last week and could have only taken so much. He almost broke. He _did_ break, in the end. “And you hadn’t even told Bucky the truth yet. It wouldn’t have been a good idea on my part to clue you in so early.”

“I understand.” It’s similar to the reason he originally wanted to keep everything from Bucky. “How do you know him, anyway?”

“I’ve been in this time for a few years. It’s hard to not run in to someone as magnetic as Bucky.”

“That it is.” He takes a swig of his drink. “Are you here with anyone?”

“Nope.” She smirks. “My date cancelled on me. I’m hoping that one of the girls whose hearts Bucky breaks when he turns them down when they offer to take him home tonight will come into my open arms.”

“There’s been five of them. Think you can handle that?”

She scoffs, but it’s playful. “Of course I can. Never has a lover left me wanting for more, no matter how many are in my bed at once.” She finishes off her glass of whiskey and signals the bartender for another. “I can give you a few pointers, if you ever need it.”

Steve doesn’t blush, but he does turn hot; the idea of having two Buckys at his beck and call is almost overwhelming. “I’ll hold you to that.”

“We’ll have to get a round in the future when you return,” she says, and Steve nods, toasting as way of agreement. “Your boy is done showing off for you.”

Steve finds Bucky on the dancefloor, making his way through the crowd of people; he’s tugging his partner along behind him, laughing and carrying on as he pushes through the people and heads toward Steve.

He’s hot and his face is flushed with heat and exertion. His curls are stuck to his forehead and his blush falls under the loosened collar of the shirt he’s wearing. He’s sweat through it, making the white fabric just translucent enough that Steve can see his peaked nipples and the dark purple bruise he sucked between Bucky’s tits last night.

“Hi,” Bucky says when he’s standing in front of Steve. “I’m parched.” He steps between Steve’s thighs to reach the glass of liquor on the bar behind Steve. He doesn’t make a move to step back after he drinks half the glass and instead makes himself comfortable against Steve’s chest. “Leslie, you look lovely tonight.”

Leslie beams. “Damn right I do,” she agrees, leaning forward to press a chaste kiss to Bucky’s cheek. Her lip stain leaves a mark that makes Steve’s stomach flutter. “You look pretty as sin, too, Bucky.”

Bucky’s eyes twinkle at the praise. “Leslie, this is Marah,” Bucky introduces his partner, tugging her forward. This close, Steve can see the dark brown freckles across her nose and the smear of lipstick at the corner of her mouth. “She’s one hell of a partner.”

“Bucky! Hush that, now.” Marah swats at him jokingly. “You know you’re the best dancer here.”

“Only ‘cause I have the best partners,” he teases, finding one of Steve’s hands with his and interlacing their fingers. He turns to Steve, looks up to meet Steve’s eyes. “Are you ready to go home?”

Steve brings his other hand up to smear the lip stain across Bucky’s cheek. “Yeah.” He taps his fingers along Bucky’s lips; Bucky smiles and kisses the tips. “What about Marah?”

“Leslie will walk her home,” Bucky says, turning to the two women. “Isn’t that right, Leslie?”

Leslie raises a brow in Bucky’s direction. “Of course,” she says. She stands, tall, almost the same height as Steve, and wraps her arm around Marah’s shoulders, bringing the younger woman against her side. Marah’s face is red but her lips are parted with wet anticipation. “It’d be a pleasure.”

“Good.” Bucky reaches for Marah’s hand and squeezes her fingers. He moves from out of Steve’s space and tugs him up after. “Bye, ladies. You two have a fun night.”

“I’m sure we will,” Marah says, looking up at Leslie as she speaks. Leslie smiles down at her.

“Be good to your boy, Steve.” Leslie winks. “Take care of him tonight.”

Bucky squirms, just a little. “He will,” he says fiercely, proudly, and Steve kisses him quickly on the neck for it.

Leslie smiles at the two of them, and then they part ways. Steve maneuvers along the wall, avoiding the thicket of the dancefloor; outside, it’s hot and the air is heavy with rain that has yet to fall. Steve puts his arm around Bucky’s shoulders and pulls him in, kissing the top of his head.

* * *

Bucky’s mouth is on Steve’s as soon as they shut and bolt the door, insistent and needy; his lips are wet and salty from his sweat and Steve smiles, lapping at the taste like it’s a delicacy, something to be treasured.

They stumble through the living room, meandering around the sparse furniture, and toward the bedroom, giggling all the way. Their clothes fall off, landing here and there; Steve has his tongue in Bucky’s mouth, his hands down the back of Bucky’s underwear, gripping Bucky’s ass in his palms and kneading the fat with practiced movements. He’s hot and hard, and plans to spend as much time tonight giving Bucky whatever he wants because he doesn’t have to wake up for the paper route in the morning.

Bucky pulls his lips from Steve’s with a huff of laughter and shoves Steve down on the bed, shoving out of his underwear. He lands awkwardly, and the pillows bounce and fall, creating a nest of sorts that he cuddles in; he raises up on his elbows, allowing Bucky to look his fill.

They left the window open and the curtains pulled wide earlier to relieve a bit of the heat; the moon is full and bright, clear like magic, and it illuminates Bucky’s face, shadowing the hunger and highlighting the arid desire that makes his eyes dilate, his lips part, his cheeks flush as if he’s run miles and miles to be here, with Steve, with only Steve, at this very moment.

Steve smiles, humbled and only half humiliated at the way Bucky is looking at him. “See anything you like?” he asks, teasingly, and spreads his legs wide, impossibly wide, baring all of himself to Bucky’s gaze.

He’s big. He’s big all over, large and imposing and daunting, even laid out like he is at the moment; he knows this. And Bucky is small—so much smaller, so much more dainty and delicate and soft, easy to bruise and break. In fact, he’s got a few yellow-green bruises on his thighs from a few days ago, when Steve got a little bit too rough with him. 

Bucky’s grin is feral. “You’re beautiful,” he says, and it isn’t what Steve expected, and before he can say anything to refute that, Bucky is on top of him, cradling his big face in his small hands, and kissing him senseless.

Steve melts against the mattress and finds Bucky’s fat hips with his hands, holding on. He lets Bucky do what he wants, take what he wants; there’s no other place he would rather be in the entire world than beneath the man he loves.

Steve opens his lips, sucking Bucky’s tongue into his mouth. He tastes nasty, like beer and old breath, but there’s next to nothing that can pry Steve away. Bucky finds Steve’s hands with his; he drags them off his hips, puts one between his legs, cupping his erection, and brings the other up to his throat, where he coaxes Steve’s fingers around. He applies a bit of pressure.

“Bucky.” Steve pulls his mouth off Bucky’s and blinks up at him, confused. “Bucky—“

“It’s okay.” He smiles and squeezes Steve’s hand with his, increasing the pressure. Steve shifts his fingers, sees the marks his fingertips are already leaving on Bucky’s pretty throat. “It’s okay. You can do it harder.”

A flash of panic erupts in Steve’s chest and bubbles over. “Bucky.” He pulls his hands from Bucky’s grip and twists, interlacing their fingers. “Bucky, I don’t think I can do that.”

“Why?

Steve blinks. “Because—”

Bucky interrupts with a vacuous, sticky, “Why do you look at me like that?” 

“Like what?”

“Like you’re scared to be yourself with me.” Bucky’s clasp on Steve’s hands tighten, as if he’s demonstrating what he can take, what he can give. It brings a watery grin to Steve’s lips—he can hardly feel it. “I can take it.”

“I know you can,” Steve says, carefully, choosing his words. He knows Bucky can take it, would take it, if Steve asked him to endure the rough, arcane unchaining of the strength he so warily keeps under check. But. “You don’t have to.”

Bucky furrows his brows. “What if I want to?” he asks, and it’s hardly above a whisper, like this is even a secret from the moon who has always been so good to them. “What then?”

Steve shrugs, as much as he can, naked and _bare_ , beneath Bucky. “Then nothing. You don’t know my strength.”

“I’d like to know it.” Bucky pulls one hand from Steve’s and puts it on his chest, combing through the hair and tugging, just a little too hard; he sucks the fingers of Steve’s other hand into his mouth, flicking his tongue and nibbling. “I like to be tossed around like I’m little. You know that.”

Steve wants to say, _You are little_ , but, instead, allows a timid, “I do,” to come out of his mouth. 

“They why don’t you do it?”

“Because you’re not like me,” he says, simply. Bucky huffs and extracts himself from Steve’s touch, leaning as far back as he can. “Where are you going?”

Bucky sighs. His eyes are hooded, lids half-open; he’s pouting, frowning like a chastised child, and Steve wants to cup his face, wants to kiss his cheeks, wants to tell him how pretty he is like this, full of trust and want—trust for Steve, want for Steve.

“I don’t want that soft stuff, Steve,” Bucky says on an exhale. “Not all the time, at least. I want to feel you. I want you to lose control.” He reaches forward and pinches Steve’s nipple, hard enough that Steve feels the sting all over his body. “I want you to fuck me so hard and deep that I can feel you in my throat.” He finds one of Steve’s hands and brings it to his throat again; Steve grips, lightly, and moans when he feels Bucky swallow against his palm. “I want to limp to work. I want people to know that my man fucks me better than anybody else can.”

“Bucky—”

“I’m your husband, Steve. I want you to fuck me like you fuck your husband.”

Steve draws in a gasp. “Bucky.” His fingers flex on Bucky’s throat and Bucky’s smile is ghostly, pale and small. Steve wants to resurrect it, bring it back to fully glory. “You need to be careful with how you run your mouth, sweetheart.”

“Not with you I don’t.” He leans low, flushes his body with Steve’s so he can kiss Steve on the nose. “Steve.” Steve grunts and, again, Bucky kisses him on the nose. “Steve, you won’t hurt me. Not anymore than I want you to.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Don’t I, though?” When Bucky leans up and away, he’s grinning like he’s happy. “You are so strong, in so many ways.” He runs his hands over the curves of Steve’s muscles; they’ve gotten softer, fainter, with a year of semi-retirement, but, still, the flex beneath flesh is a bark that is not telling of its bite. “But you could never hurt me. Not really, in the way that you’re thinking. You don’t have that kind of strength in here to do that to me.” He taps Steve’s chest, right above his heart. “Trust me.”

Steve looks at Bucky’s eyes, twinkly and bright and so unreal. “I do.”

Bucky smiles. “Trust yourself with me,” he says, caressing the sides of Steve’s face, Steve’s chest, Steve’s hips, with fingertips that are soft and rough all at once. “Please, Steve. There’s no need to be afraid.” 

Steve opens his mouth to say something, to catch the lie in Bucky’s words, but he realizes that there is no lie. There is no falsity. He’s strong, beyond that of the comprehension of a normal man like Bucky. But he’s had years to learn himself, learn who he is, and Bucky has been the one constant in his life that he has always shared that with.

There is no reason to stop that now.

Bucky’s right. Bucky’s always right. It makes him giggle, kind of. His husband will be so pleased to hear that.

“I love you,” Steve says, reverent and breathless, as he draws Bucky down.

Bucky laughs into Steve’s mouth. “I love you,” he says, kissing Steve, gentle, and then hot and heavy, all at once. He opens his mouth, Steve licks inside, and then Steve is leaning up, standing up, holding Bucky in his arms and spinning, tossing Bucky down onto the bed in the position he was in just moments before. He puts his hands on Bucky’s chest and pushes down, firm enough to keep him in place, and pulls his kiss off Bucky’s lips, trailing his tongue and teeth down to lave at the fading red-pink marks his fingers have already left behind. “Steve—”

“Hush.” Steve bites the hollow of Bucky’s neck, nearly breaking the skin. Bucky hisses and tenses, but the rigidity leaves his body when Steve kisses the mark he’s left behind. “Let me take care of you the way I know how.”

Bucky leans up onto his elbows, wobbly with a frighteningly unstable balance. His eyes are wide and dark; his face is pink like the darkening marks Steve is sucking into his skin. His body, so soft and small, cushiony and warm and lovely and so unlike Steve’s that it’s a hot temptation, is spread out, wide and inviting, and Steve sinks low, low, dragging his teeth across Bucky’s nipples, kissing the sting away when Bucky hisses, suckling like a baby to a breast.

“Fuck,” Bucky sighs, the word long and leaden between them. He puts his hands in Steve’s hair and drops back onto the bed; all strain has left his body. “You’re going to be the death of me.”

Steve laughs into the swell of Bucky’s stomach, running his hands over the plumpness. He _loves_ Bucky like this—open and receiving and so unafraid of who he is, what he wants. This is all he’s ever wanted, and now that he can have it, with Bucky and with his husband, he is never letting that liberation of love out of his hands ever again.

“I sure hope not.” He crosses his arms on Bucky’s stomach and looks up, catches Bucky’s eyes. They’re twinkling like the stars outside, ducking behind he fluffy clouds. “I wanna keep you for a little while.”

“A little while?”

Steve shrugs. “I want to keep you for the rest of my life,” he says. “If you’ll have me.”

Bucky blinks. “‘If you’ll have me,’ he says—‘if you’ll have me,’ like I don’t want you, like I don’t have you, like I don’t love—“ Bucky shuts himself up and shoves Steve’s shoulders. “I love you, you silly man. You _bastard_.”

“I’m a bastard?”

“Yes. Yes, a bastard!” Bucky laughs and thumps the heels of his feet against the small of Steve’s back. “Now—now, go on, and fuck me. Before I wither from my want and you’re left with nothing.”

Steve laughs in a way only Bucky has seen. He moves along Bucky’s body, dragging his lips everywhere; he captures dimples on the outside of Bucky’s thighs, kisses them hard, and drags his fingers along skin that’s painted in goosebumps. He’s slow and thoughtful, worshipping Bucky’s body, loving his favorite places, ducking smiles into the curve of Bucky’s collarbone and licking sweat from Bucky’s brow and scratching along Bucky’s chest and nipping the inside of Bucky’s thighs as he buries himself there, scenting.

He could stay here forever, like this, breathing Bucky in, hearing him gasp and sigh and come alive under the marks that Steve’s pressing into his body. They’re not violent, not brutal; they’ll stay for a few days and then fade to yellow-green, a lesson he’s learned through the years, and the festering, unconfined jouissance that simmers in his blood is enlightening and potent.

He flips Bucky over, presses Bucky’s face in the pillows. Bucky makes a noise that Steve soothes by running his fingertips along the dimples in Bucky’s back. He gets on his knees and elbows, spreads Bucky’s ass cheeks, and gives Bucky a long, wet lick up from his perineum to his hole.

Bucky quivers, lets out a whimper, and reaches back for Steve. Steve offers his hand; Bucky’s grip loosens and tightens rhythmically as Steve swings from licking to kissing to sucking to tonguing at Bucky’s hole. He presses his thumb against the furl and rubs till Bucky is soft and fluttery, and then presses inside with his tongue, too.

He slurps his saliva and spits it on Bucky’s hole, pressing two other fingers in beside his thumb. He doesn’t stop till he’s knuckle deep, and then begins to spread them apart. He spits once more, watching the way it squelches inside of Bucky as he presses in with a fourth finger. He wonders, suddenly, if he could fit his whole hand inside.

Bucky trembles like he’s freezing.

“Bucky?” Steve kisses the bottom of Bucky’s spine.

“M’fine.” Bucky sounds fucked out. Steve laughs.

“Buttercup.” Steve pulls his fingers out and gives Bucky’s wet, winking hole one more kiss before he kneels up and places the head of his cock to Bucky’s entrance. He spits in his palm and lathers himself up. “Say buttercup if it’s too much and we’ll stop.” He waits for Bucky’s nod of acknowledgement before he pushes inside. “Breathe for me.”

Bucky opens his mouth to do just that, but his breath catches as Steve presses in. He chokes. “Steve!”

Steve splays his hand on Bucky’s hip, digging his fingers in as a sort of anchor. “It’s just the tip, honey,” he says, calms. “You can take it. You can do it.” He presses inside a little bit more; he feels Bucky’s body spasm once before opening to the intrusion and begging for Steve to slide in deep. He throws his head back and groans. “That’s it, Bucky. That’s it. You’re doing so good.”

Bucky curls his arms beneath the pillow and arches his back. “Is it in?”

“Halfway.”

“Fuck.”

“You want slick?” Bucky nods. Steve kisses the nape of Bucky’s neck. “Thank you for telling me. I’ll be right back.”

He leaves Bucky on the bed and pilfers around on the desk till he finds the tin can of oil; he opens it and tips a generous amount on his fingers, fucking them into Bucky to get him slick, and then gets himself wet. He caps the top and tosses it on the bed and then grabs Bucky’s hips with both hands and pulls him back on his cock.

Bucky, breached to the hilt, screams, and throws his hands out, clutching whatever he can get hold of. Steve pulls out to the tip and shoves back in; the sound of their skin slapping together does nothing to diminish the pitch of Bucky’s whorish snivels. Steve reaffirms his grasp on Bucky’s hips, knowing his fingerprints are going to leave purple bruises, and sets a pace that makes him sweat, that makes Bucky cry and shove up on the bed from the force.

Their cadence takes a moment to match, and when it does the pattern is wonderful. Bucky fucks back and Steve drives forward, and the cacophony of their bodies coming together is lewd and ancient and all-consuming. It’s primal and loving, rough and filthy, and Steve is ashamed he thought he could keep the way they love like this away from Bucky.

Steve lets go of Bucky’s hips, reaching for Bucky’s hair. He knots his finds in the curls and uses it as leverage to pull Bucky up. Bucky moves with Steve without question, sweet noises falling from his mouth like candy.

Steve taps two fingers against Bucky’s bottom lip before pressing them into Bucky’s heated mouth. “Bite if you want to stop,” he instructs, and Bucky nods, pitiful and brainless, rolling his eyes back so Steve can see just how gone he really is. “You’re gorgeous.”

Bucky’s face turns even more red and he moans around Steve’s fingers, sucking them like they’re Steve’s cock, and Steve growls, half wild, and redoubles his efforts.

He fucks Bucky. He fucks Bucky hard, without reservations; Bucky trusts him, asked Steve to trust himself, and he does, he is, and Bucky is whimpering, sobbing from the force of sensation, and he puts one hand on his cock as it sways between his legs, puts the other on the lower half of his tummy and pushes as if he can feel Steve shoving inside, and—fuck, can he? Can he feel how deep Steve is inside of him; can he feel how Steve wants to spray his insides and plug him up till he’s fat with as many loads as he wants?

“Good?” Steve smears his low hums of pleasure into the back of Bucky’s neck, where his hairs curl like ringlets. He takes his fingers out of Bucky’s mouth and puts his palm against Bucky’s throat, pressing gently.

Bucky pants like he’s been running his entire life to this destination, wrapped up in Steve’s arms. “Never been better.”

Steve nods, once, and adjusts, pressing Bucky down into the bed and laying atop him. Bucky cries out as Steve rolls his hips; Bucky’s pleasure, expansive as it is, is Steve’s pleasure, too, and he focuses on the string of fate that ties the two of them together, mashing his mouth against Bucky’s shoulder and biting down, breaking the skin.

He’s gone with it, gone in Bucky and the way that he’s held, fearless and inevitable, like there’s never been any other end for the two of them. They move together, perfect, like the moonlight on their bodies, and Bucky’s sobbing his name, crying, and Steve follows, spilling and flowing into him.

He screws into Bucky a few more times, pumping him full, till they’re both breathless and sensitive. He pulls out, stuffs two fingers into Bucky’s hole to keep him plugged, and then falls to the side. Bucky finds his lips easily, and he kisses Steve’s mouth, pleading, with salty tears on his cheeks.

Steve cradles Bucky’s face in his palm. He kisses Bucky till his lips hurt, and then he kisses Bucky some more, rubbing his cheek along Bucky’s and reddening his skin all the more.

“Are you here with me?” Steve asks, just above a whisper.

Bucky nods. “Yeah,” he replies, brokenly, and gives Steve a quick smile. He looks down at the wet spot he made in the bed and frowns. “We have to change the sheets.”

Steve grins. “Later,” he says, gripping Bucky’s thigh and lifting his leg; he slides close, slides back inside Bucky’s heat, shivering at the feel, at the welcome, warm and wet and wide. “I’m not done with you yet.”

Bucky buries his face in Steve’s chest and sobs as Steve begins to move.

* * *

Steve wakes up hours later to the sound of rustling fabric and breathless, half-sighs of pleasure. The moon is still bright in the sky, angled away, and there’s echoes of thunder and lightning as the storm moves away, but the sun is begging to peak over the horizon; everything is bathed in a dark shade of blue as the leftover rain trickles down from the rooftop. He rolls over, searching for Bucky’s warmth, but he isn’t there.

Concerned, he shoots up, glancing around the room. His eyes land on Bucky, standing in front of the closed door. There’s a mirror hanging there, and it’s cracked in three of the corners but it reflects perfectly fine. Bucky is bare, soft, bruised, and he is slack-jawed, fingering the dark marks that Steve left on his body hours ago.

He’s a marvel, something that Steve never envisioned being able to cherish.

Eased, he lays back down and smiles. “What’re you doing?” he asks, a bit groggy. 

Bucky looks over his shoulder. “Admiring myself, of course.”

Steve looks at Bucky’s body. There’s no rhyme or reason to the marks left behind; it’s bruises and teeth marks and burns from his beard, and they look pretty, like rain drops on hot concrete, the first breeze of the day. “Do they hurt?”

“Only when I press into them.” Bucky pushes against a dark purple bruise that’s just above his hip. His body trembles and his eyes flicker. “It’s a good hurt.”

“I’m sorry.”

Bucky scoffs. “Don’t be. I loved it. You did, too.” He turns back to the mirror, grinning delicately at his reflection. “I look like a painting. My body was a blank canvas, and you took your fingertips and painted your love across my skin.”

A blossom of lava-like love warms Steve from the inside out. “You look like mine,” he muses, content. 

Bucky turns and makes his way toward the bed. “I am yours,” he says, crawling on the mattress toward Steve. He curls himself against Steve’s chest, cuddling close. “How long till you have to leave for your paper route?”

Steve shrugs. “Don’t know.” He says the words into the top of Bucky’s head.

“Lay with me till you have to go?”

Steve nods, kisses Bucky’s temple, and holds him till the dark blue dawn is replaced by streaks of green and yellow and orange.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve has a fleeting thought, then. “You know,” he begins, laughing under his chest, so rumbly that Bucky looks up and meets his eyes, “you never did tell me what that greaseball Hank Irving said to you on that first day.” 
> 
> Bucky blinks and laughs. “He asked me if I was planning on marrying you since you’re all I talked about,” he answers. 
> 
> “Well.” Steve finds Bucky’s hand with his and brings it up so the two of them can see the way the moonlight drifting through the window makes the wedding ring on Steve’s finger sparkle like starlight. “We sure showed him, didn’t we, darling?” 

Time passes, fast and slow all at once, like hot taffy stretching; the jewels on the ring flash and glow and fade as the days pass. The daylight hours are spent doing as much as they can, whatever and anything, like skipping work and kissing at Coney Island under the fireworks, eating fried funnel cakes and licking the powdered sugar from one another’s fingers, midnight picnics in the park and watching the sunrises through their bedroom window; the nights are spent tucked against one another, giggling and fucking and kissing and making love, learning the ever-evolving symphonies of one another’s bodies and, still, always coming back for more.

They find a routine with each other, similar to the one Steve shares with his husband in the future. Steve indulges Bucky after the night Bucky convinced him to not hold back, giving Bucky everything he asks for and everything he doesn’t ask for. And, in turn, Bucky takes care of Steve, even when he doesn’t ask, especially when he doesn’t ask, and does so with a smile, because that’s what happens when you love and trust someone, when you love to trust and trust to love someone—you know their heart better than pirates knew the stars.

It’s good. It’s great. It’s bittersweet because it’s what Steve could have had with Bucky years prior to the war if only the two of them weren’t so frightened by the unknown possibilities.

Steve knows them, knows how it ends. It ends in happiness. It’ll always end in happiness between them. And if that bastard, always-itching-for-a-fight skinny kid comes back from wherever the hell he’s at and messes up all the hard work Steve’s put in to loving Bucky, being loved by Bucky, he’s going to be so pissed off.

* * *

Steve fucks Bucky against the door like he wanted on the first night they made love.

It’s hasty and rough, a spur of the moment decision brought on by Bucky walking in after work, sweaty and giggly, shirt half unbuttoned and nipples on display, and the door very nearly breaks in two, but Bucky’s body is sucking Steve’s cock so deep, even at this angle, and his own prick is wet and weepy, drooling clear liquid that makes Steve’s stomach sticky, and Steve thrusts as hard as he can for as long as he can, drawing three—he stopped counting at three, that is—orgasms from Bucky before he, too, let go and came inside Bucky, spraying his guts so good that, surely, _surely_ , this time it’ll take.

Steve goes cross-eyed with the thought of that, of getting Bucky’s insides so wet with his cum that, somehow, he gets pregnant, which is an empty, fruitless thought, but, still, it’s _fun_ , and he takes Bucky off the door and carries him to the bedroom, lays him down on the bed and kisses his fucked wide hole, keeping it open with his thumbs on either side, and then slicks up once more and pushes back inside again.

Like this, somehow impossibly larger, hotter and harder than before, he almost splits Bucky in half. And, holy cow, that thought boils Steve’s brains, leaving behind a scrambled mess; the words falling from Bucky’s delicate, deliciously wet mouth are a litany of repetition, recurring swears that serve as continuous motivation.

It’s all, “Fuck, Steve, your cock,” and, “I want it, I want it,” and, “You’re so big inside me,” and, “It’s too good,” and, “I want you in me all the time,” and, “I feel you in my throat.”

Steve pulls out, tugs and turns Bucky onto his back. He grips one of Bucky’s thighs, shoving it up, up, till Bucky keens with the stretch; Steve is too enamored with the way Bucky’s hole, stretched and open, begging for him to nestle back inside, puckers and winks, spreading so beautiful for Steve’s cock because it’s molded to his length.

Bucky looks up at him, teary-eyed and red-faced, fucked out, and mewls so loud Steve’s sure the city below can hear how good he’s being fucked.

“Hush.” Steve taps Bucky’s lips with the pad of his thumb, pressing just inside with the tip of his cock. He wants to keep Bucky here, laid out beneath him, sweaty and glowing in the sunspots, for as long as he can. “Don’t alert the whole city.” It’s still daytime, after all, and the populace is coming alive now that the work day is over.

“Oh, please, Steve, it’s too good, too good,” Bucky whines, pitifully, half-choked, and digs his nails into Steve’s biceps as Steve bucks forward, shoving all the way inside.

Carefully, lovingly, Steve closes a hand around Bucky’s throat, nothing more than a hot warning of pressure, a glutenous suggestion of pleasure, and slows the roll of his hips until he’s moving at a sluggish, punishing pace. Bucky lets out a belly-deep groan that Steve feels in his own chest and finds Steve’s other hand and brings it to his lips, sucking two of Steve’s fingers into his mouth.

He’s glowing. He’s stuffed, plugged, silenced. He’s so happy he’s crying with it.

Steve could keep Bucky here, in their bed, and ride him till dawn, but it’s too much, like Bucky said, and he’s too close, and so he pulls his fingers from Bucky’s mouth, puts them between his own lips to suck off the spit, and then reaches for Bucky’s teary, distressed cock, and begins to jerk him in cadence with the movement of his hips.

His thumb slides over the rosy slit, pressing inside once, twice, three and four and five times, and Bucky, sensitive and edging on the pleasure-pain, spills, mostly dry, bends up like it hurts and cries like a little baby. Steve gathers what cum is in his palm and smears it on Bucky’s mouth, leaning down to kiss and lick and suck the spend off Bucky’s face. It doesn’t take long for his brain to white out.

The world settles back into focus slowly. He’s aware of Bucky’s heavy breaths and hot, clammy skin sticking to his, and he rolls to the side, hushing Bucky when he starts to whine and guiding his softening cock back into Bucky’s fucked wide hole. He holds Bucky against him, chest to chest, until their breathing evens and slows.

Bucky looks up and grins. He kisses Steve, soft and chaste and gentle, and Steve rolls over, rolls Bucky under him, and they don’t fuck again, no, but it feels good, nice, to be warm inside of Bucky, to keep Bucky full and stretched, and they fall asleep like that, tangled and satisfied.

* * *

They visit Sarah Rogers’ grave together, bundling up against the rain and keeping to alleyway shortcuts that they learned when they were younger.

Her grave is in an old, half-forgotten cemetery outside of the city. The path is cobblestone, trafficked so heavily through the years that the rocks are smoothed over and tiny little flowers are sifting through the cracks; her grave is tucked behind a hill and off to the right, next to an aged weeping willow whose hanging limbs kiss the top of her tombstone and have painted it green.

There’s a bench next to her grave, something that George Barnes put there when Bucky whispered about how often Steve would come home with dirt stains on his trousers and grass in his hair. He takes a seat on it now, ignoring the lump that shoves up in his throat at the harsh nostalgia of being _here_ , and pats the spot next to him. Bucky sits and finds Steve’s hand, gathering it between both of his. He fiddles with the wedding ring on Steve’s finger, almost as if he’s nervous. It makes Steve smile and gives him enough strength to open his mouth and talk.

It’s difficult at first, after having had the idea that it’s better to keep things to himself beaten into him through the years of being under the military’s hold, but he’s quickly comforted by the knowledge that this his _momma_ and when he opens his mouth to speak he finds that he can’t stop until he’s finished.

He talks about everything he can think of, tells his mother’s tombstone a watered-down tale of his life after her death. He keeps it as vague as he can, going quiet and subdued at certain parts and loud and giddy others, and when he talks about Bucky, how they were apart for so long but now they’re together, and married, and wearing rings that their mothers wore years ago, he feels that he’s crying, and he wipes his tears away and continues.

He tells her that her grave was moved in the seventies, that his beloved friend Natasha found out and sent him on his way so he could visit. He tells her about Sam and Sharon and T’Challa and Thor, and laughs because he knows she would have loved them, loved all of them, and been so joyous to see the family that her son has gathered for himself.

He tells her about his marriage to Bucky. He tells her about the children they’re going to adopt, a whole bushel, and how he isn’t worried about being a good father because she showed him how to love a child and that’s with everything you have in your heart and soul. He tells her how he can’t wait to pass the stories she used to share with him on to her grandchildren so that they may know her, even if only a little bit.

He talks and talks and talks. He talks till he has nothing else to say, and then he just sits there, with Bucky against him, laying on his shoulder and fussing with the ring, a silent presence that cultivates strength and gentle perseverance, and they don’t leave until the sun begins to go down.

* * *

When they arrive back to the apartment, Steve is itching with unrest and he lets Bucky take him on their bed, slow and sweet and soft, a rare decadence that Steve only allows himself to want on days where he can’t fathom anything beyond. Their fingers catch and hold, intertwining above his head on the bed. Bucky fucks him with easy, languid strokes, pressing his grunts into the hollow of Steve’s throat. The orange-pink sunset slips through, and Bucky leans up and smiles, and Steve is undone.

He lets himself open to Bucky, lets Bucky whisper saccharine praises in his ear as his sweat-slick hands slip and slide on his skin, begging for purchase to ground the two of them to the here and now. He feels raw and seen and split wide open; he lets himself pretend that he’s precious, that he’s lovely, that he’s all the pretty words that Bucky swears he is.

Steve finishes first, with his hand stripping his cock. Bucky fucks him till he comes, too, and then continues till he’s soft and Steve is oversensitive and sore, a delicious sensation that feels too good to be true. He falls atop Steve and meshes their noses together until their breathing slows and the sweat on their skin cools, leaving behind gooseflesh that’s soothed by shaky, trembling fingertips.

Bucky sighs, puts a kiss to Steve’s shoulder, and says, “Thank you for trusting yourself like this with me.”

* * *

“Do you still draw?”

Steve pulls himself away from the book he’s reading and looks up at Bucky, who’s leaning over the back of the sofa, arms crossed, with an inquisitive furrow to his brows. He’s wearing only a big white shirt, similar to the one that he stole off Jamie O’Malley’s clothesline, and his curls are half-dry and wispy across his forehead. He looks pliant and light and on the path to debauchery, like a pirate’s concubine.

“No,” Steve replies. “Not since the war.”

Bucky hums and holds his cheeks in his hands. “Why not?”

Steve shrugs. “There’s no real reason,” he answers, but he dog ears his page and shuts his book anyway, placing it off to the side on the table to give Bucky his full attention. “After the procedure that made me this way, I was always doing something, and then when the war started I didn’t have time to do anything, really, except be a leader.” He swallows, frowning; his hobbies changed from reading and drawing to mapping strategic escape routes and deciding the best ways not to die while in an open field. “Besides, my hands are too big for the pencils and I kept breaking them in half.”

He did his best to make time everyday during the USO tour to take a break and relax; for a long time, that meant grabbing his charcoal and finding a slip of paper and doodling something of little import. After he officially joined the war effort in Europe, though, and found that his anger and hatred toward the rampant display of fascism bled out in his ghastly treatment of delicate materials like pencils and onion skin paper, he decided that maybe he ought to give up his indulgent avocation since he did nothing but destroy whatever softness he created.

So, he tucked away his pencils and paper into the assigned office they gave him. He was hardly ever in there, only pilfering through the place when he needed extra information or a moment to himself, and so he never had to face the truth of who he became.

He didn’t think about it. Much. In fact, he forgot about it; drawing wasn’t his only pastime, and he found that it was easier to enjoy things already created beforehand.

Still, though, he regrets it. Kind of. As much as he can regret something that he gave up in order to put his mind and his heart at ease.

Bucky reaches out and brushes a bit of bangs off Steve’s forehead. He smiles like the sun, ethereal and appealing. “I think you may feel different if we got you things that are your size and not the size you used to be,” he says, achingly gentle. “How does that sound?”

He thinks a moment. Of course, he thought of that, too, but there’s often so much than one can get their hands on during a war; Captain America had limits, too, regardless of the perception history and his reputation as a rule-breaking, hotblooded American have implemented through the years. Even he couldn’t request pretty pencils.

Steve inhales. “Maybe,” he says, more to placate Bucky and get rid of the worried crease in his brow than in actual consideration.

Bucky leans over the back of the couch and kisses Steve on the forehead before flouncing

* * *

Leslie invites them to the bar for another night of drinking and dancing; Steve lets— _lets_ because there is no way that Steve would choose to do this of his own violation no matter the time—Bucky talk him in to being dragged onto the dancefloor. It takes only a smile, really, and a wink with a twinkle in Bucky’s eyes, and Steve, love drunk and permissive, follows Bucky.

He would follow Bucky anywhere. That’s simple fact.

The floor is less crowded than it looks, surprisingly. They find a small corner that’s mostly untouched by the lights above and hold one another close; the song is slow and melodic, and Bucky lays his ear to Steve’s chest and breathes in, breathes out with the beat of Steve’s heart as they sway back and forth.

The next song is a bit more giddy and lively. Steve doesn’t know the steps but that doesn’t matter because he tugs Bucky into the thicket of the crowd, anyway, and together they dance, with each other, swinging from one another to the partners around them, always coming back in the end, and it’s unobtrusive and joyous in a certain way that Steve never imagined dancing could be.

So he keeps it doing it.

They dance for hours, together and with others. Leslie steps in at one point and spins Steve into a waltz, and Mara follows, too, with a fast Irish jig; Bucky isn’t jealous but he is turned on, obviously so, and he leads Steve into the restroom for a few stolen moments before he’s set to ease.

When they finally call it a night, long after lost call, and they arrive home, they continue their dancing. It’s dirtier, filthier, and ends with Bucky bent over the kitchen table, laughing as the apples he knocked off roll around the linoleum, and Steve leans over him, draws him into a kiss, and hopes his skinny self foregoes denying Bucky the next time he inevitably asks for a dance.

* * *

The next day, a package of large, sturdy pencils—charcoal and color—appear on the kitchen table. Beside them are two blank notebooks, freshly purchased and still smelling of the art supplies store that’s next to the university. Steve has no idea when Bucky found the time to go and purchase something so loving without Steve knowing.

Steve runs his fingers along the pages, testing their strength. The pencils feel good in his hands; they don’t bend or break in his grip, either, no matter how hard he presses against the paper to get the shading and coloring just right.

He asks Bucky to sit for him. Bucky does so, happily, gladly, proudly, and Steve draws him, over and over again, in charcoal and color, until the sun has set and the moon has risen and their lips are kissed-red.

* * *

Steve is shocked when he comes home after his paper route, traipsing as quietly as he can through the apartment in order to not startle Bucky, and enters their bedroom to see Bucky on the bed, naked and spread wide, face down and ass up, mewling like a kitten looking for a nipple.

He’s reaching behind himself with one hand, gripping his ass and pulling apart his cheeks, while the other is stuffed under him, stripping his cock lazily; his hole, pink and fluttery, is wet and stretched on his fingers and the prettiest sight Steve could have walked in on.

Steve lets loose of a punched-out noise. “Bucky,” he says, whispers, breathless and so quickly aroused that he feels almost lightheaded with it. 

“Hey, sweetheart.” Bucky laughs, low in his throat, and follows it with a moan that bounces off the walls and swallows Steve whole. “How was the route?”

“ _Bucky.”_

As if Steve is able to hold a conversation with Bucky looking like _that_.

Bucky turns his head as much as he can on the pillows and finds Steve’s gaze; his eyes are full of mirth and white hot pleasure. He is a heathen, aware of exactly just what it is he is doing. “What’s wrong, Steve?” he asks, taunts, all whorish and ready to be fucked, as if Steve didn’t give it to him last night to the point of near-exhaustion for the both of them. “See something you like?”

Steve is silent. He kicks out of his shoes and pulls his shirt over his head and shoves down his trousers in a flashing fit of fury, tripping over the puddle of clothing on the floor as he plows forward.

Bucky’s laughter rings in the air again. “C’mon, Steve.” He pulls his fingers out of himself and hooks the rim, spreading himself so Steve can see how wide he is. “Been playin’ with myself like this since you left. Came once, but I’ve been waiting on you.”

“Only once? That’s not fair.” Steve raises a brow and reaches for Bucky’s hips with both hands; he tugs Bucky to the edge of the bed for better access, cutting off Bucky’s squeal in surprise when he pushes two of his fingers in beside Bucky’s. He’s open and warm and snug. “A pretty boy like you deserves more than one orgasm. Should we fix that?”

“Yes,” Bucky gasps, fucking himself back on Steve’s fingers. They’re bigger than Bucky’s, anyway, and Steve can reach inside deeper. “God, yes, we should.”

Steve grins. He pulls his fingers out and takes hold of the base of his length, guiding himself to Bucky’s hole; it’s overly wet and smooth, slick and hot, and he presses the tip inside, just barely, and watches the way that the rim stretches to accommodate his girth, turning the prettiest shade of pink.

“Steve?”

“Shh.” He soothes a hand across Bucky’s lower back, pressing into the dimpled divots at the bottom of his spine. He sinks himself in deeper, mesmerized as Bucky’s body rebels against his intrusion at first and then, beautifully, like a sigh, accepts and parts around him, pleading for him to go in as deeply as he can.

He throws his head back and groans.

Bucky whimpers, pressing back. “Are you watching yourself go inside me?”

Steve nods, pulling out slowly, enthralled with the inverted action, too. “Yeah,” he says, croaks. “Yeah, Buck. It’s a sight.”

Bucky moans like a dog in heat and pulls himself forward and off Steve’s cock completely. The noise it makes—if Steve were a bigger man he would ignore it but, fact is, he has always been gone for Bucky, and he’s a fascinated by the sounds Bucky’s body makes.

“Look at me,” Bucky says, half-hoarse and thick with sensation. “Look at how good I open for you.”

Steve, riveted, hooks both thumbs on the rim and pulls Bucky even wider. He whines at the sight, absolutely corrupt in his pleasure, and sticks himself back inside around his fingers. Bucky’s so good for him, so perfect for him, that he deserves to be as full as he can be.

Bucky drops his shoulders on the bed and turns to liquid, almost, as he gets himself comfortable for a fucking. “I fit you so well, don’t I?” he says, smug, and rightly so. 

Steve moans and presses all the way in; his balls are flush with Bucky’s pert ass and he takes his fingers from Bucky’s hole and grips Bucky’s hips. “That’s right, darling.” He puts one leg up on the bed for leverage and begins to fuck into Bucky, hard and without warning at the ferocity. They have their safe word if it gets too much. “Spread your legs for me, Bucky, that’s it, as wide as you can.”

Bucky does as he’s told, like a good boy, and he stuffs his face in the sheets and sobs as Steve fucks him till the sun rises completely and the heat of the day permeates the bubble of erotic euphoria they’ve made with one another.

* * *

“You did _what?_ ”

Steve winces. “I said, ‘I’m with you’—“

“I heard you, and I think you’re a fucking idiot!” Bucky throws his hands up in the air and walks into the bathroom; still, he continues to mumble, “Goddamn fool, thinking ‘I’m with you till the end of the line’ is the best way to remind me who he is in the future, the fucking—“

Steve leans back into the sofa and laughs.

* * *

“I want to marry you,” Bucky says over breakfast.

Steve finishes chewing his apple before he replies, “Okay, honey.”

They enlist the help of Leslie and her girlfriend, the sweet young woman Bucky danced with at the bar weeks ago, and they—more or less—sneak into the church the two of them grew up in. Leslie serves as the officiant and Mara serves as the witness; Bucky bought two toy rings at an antique shop on the way and Steve recites the same vows he spoke last October. He wipes the tears from Bucky’s eyes and laughs when Mara points out that he’s crying, too.

They say ‘I do’ and kiss so long that Leslie and Mara take their leave.

And then they fuck in the confessional, hard and giggly, and Bucky wears the pattern of the mesh covering the window between the booths on his back for hours.

* * *

On the last night of Steve’s time in the past, Bucky puts him on his knees.

He drops, hard, and Bucky’s hands land in his hair when he begins to untuck his shirt and unfasten the buttons of his trousers. Bucky breathes softly, surely, as Steve tugs his britches down low enough to free his cock; Steve moves the hem of the shirt out of his way and takes hold and strokes Bucky to full hardness, kissing the tip affectionately when it begins to dampen and weep.

Bucky flexes his fingers in Steve’s hair and says, high-pitched and strained, “Fuck, Steve—”

“Don’t come,” Steve says, flicking his eyes up briefly. Bucky is already sweating. “Not yet, at least.”

“Oh. Oh, sweetheart.” Bucky is playfully affronted, putting on a show to make Steve roll his eyes and tug, almost painfully, at his balls. Bucky concedes. "Okay, if that’s what you want.”

Steve does, in fact, want just that, and he closes his eyes at the sugary tone of _sweetheart_. Bucky’s hands ball in his hair and draw him forward; Steve uses his grip on the base of Bucky’s cock to feed the length into his mouth. He tastes like skin and salt and sweat, a heady mixture that convinces Steve to draw himself from his britches and pump his own cock in time with his ministrations on Bucky’s.

He moans, reminiscent of the way Bucky does when Steve’s sliding in just this side of too deep, and Bucky echoes his sound in kind.

“You should see yourself right now,” Bucky says, moving his hands down to cradle Steve’s face. He pokes his finger at the movement of his cockhead against Steve’s cheeks; Steve hollows his cheeks and sucks harder. “I wish you could. You look so good on your knees, taking my cock sweeter than those honey cakes you love so much.” He smiles, reverent, and caresses Steve’s jawbone with his thumbprint. “I never thought—I never thought it’d be this easy. I thought I would have to beg you to love me back.”

Steve pulls off with an audible, wet ‘pop’ that sits and festers in the air. “Never,” he says, harsh and vindictive and angrily stubborn.

Bucky’s eyes twinkle. “Promise?”

Steve gives Bucky’s cock one final lick before standing and pushing Bucky, still half-dressed, down onto the bed. “I will love you till the end of time.”

Bucky laughs like he’s the happiest man in this universe and those beyond, too. “That’s what I like to hear,” he says, reaching for Steve. “Come here, you big lovesick idiot.”

“You need to work on your terms of endearment before you hurt my feelings,” Steve replies, making quick work of his clothes and the rest of Bucky’s before crawling up on the bed to kneel over Bucky, who’s still giggling like a fool. “I like it when you called me sweetheart.”

Bucky hums. “I like it better when I call you my husband.”

Steve whimpers, struck by lightning even though there is no storm cloud in the sky, and falls against Bucky, bringing Bucky into a kiss.

* * *

Later, after their final round of love making, they’re lying in bed. Bucky’s hand is on Steve’s chest and he’s tickling across his pecs, twirling his fingertips in the fine, brown sugar-colored chest hair there, and Steve is combing back Bucky’s bangs, watching the resilient way the curls he tugs straight eventually coil back to the shape they’re used to.

He’s already said his goodbyes—to Leslie, to Mara, to Mr. Garner and the people on the paper route that he enjoyed seeing once more, even though they didn’t have any inclination as to who he is. He said goodbye to his mother, too, and promised to fly out with Bucky and their children as soon as he could to visit and decorate her grave.

It’s bittersweet with an odd mixture of nostalgia and melancholy: Steve wants to go home and Bucky wants his Steve back, that much is known, but, still, the two of them have built a life together, no matter how short it was.

It was good. It _is_ good. Even now—especially now, half-dressed in loose trousers and laying against one another. And Steve doesn’t want to say goodbye, doesn’t know how to say goodbye—so he doesn’t. Instead, he just holds Bucky, and, in turn, Bucky holds him, and the knowledge of Steve’s impending departure is heavy in the air and, really, that’s as good of a farewell as the two of them need.

“It’s almost midnight,” Bucky muses offhandedly, drawing Steve from his thoughts. His words are quiet and his voice is hoarse; Steve rubs his hand along Bucky’s shoulder to soothe whatever it is that he can. “You’ll be gone soon.”

Steve hums. “You won’t be alone for long,” he says, putting as much belief and conviction as he can in his response. The truth is that he doesn’t know how long it’s going to take for him to return to the future and his skinny self to return to the past, but he does know that there is nothing that can keep him from Bucky for long, no matter what timeline they’re in. That’s a comfort, the one single truth in the entire world. “I’m sure the other Steve will be here not long after I go.”

“You better be right ‘cause if you’re not I’ll kick your ass in the future.”

“That’s fair.” Steve pretends that he can’t feel the hot tears that are welling in Bucky’s eyes and spilling over. His own eyes sting, too, but that is neither here nor there. “Don’t let him run away from you when he comes back, Bucky. Promise me you won’t let him get in his head and decide that the two of you are better off without having this. You’re not. And I know ‘cause I’ve lived it.”

Bucky nods, once, jerky and rough. “I promise.”

“Kick his ass if you have to.”

“Oh, he’d love that.”

Steve doesn’t say anything in response. He continues to rub his hand along whatever part of Bucky’s skin he can, occasionally drawing figures with his fingertips whenever inspiration strikes. Bucky nestles in as close as he can, stuffs his face into Steve’s throat and breathes like this is the last moment he will have fresh air for a long, long time.

It isn’t. Or, well—Steve hopes it isn’t, at least, but he can’t guarantee anything.

Steve has a fleeting thought, then. “You know,” he begins, laughing under his chest, so rumbly that Bucky looks up and meets his eyes, “you never did tell me what that greaseball Hank Irving said to you on that first day.”

Bucky blinks and laughs. “He asked me if I was planning on marrying you since you’re all I talked about,” he answers.

“Well.” Steve finds Bucky’s hand with his and brings it up so the two of them can see the way the moonlight drifting through the window makes the wedding ring on Steve’s finger sparkle like starlight. “We sure showed him, didn’t we, darling?” 

Bucky rolls his eyes and laughs, smearing the noise into Steve’s shoulder. Steve wraps Bucky up tight, holding him close, knowing this will be the final time he gets to do this, and watches the last jewel on his ring glow and shine, simmer and fade to black.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He doesn’t want to be a good soldier. That time is long gone; the shield has been passed and it’s time that the legend of the first Captain America gathers dust in the history books the same way that the photos from their life before the war do in the attic. He wants to be a good man—he wants to be a good husband and a good father.
> 
> That’s how he wants to be remembered, long after he’s gone. 
> 
> He scoffs. The exit in a blaze of glory is bullshit, after all. 

There’s a sudden and searing, blinding pain, like being ripped in half and stapled back together, entirely equivalent to the agony he felt before, and then—

* * *

Everything stops as abruptly as it began. He is in an endless space void of sound and light and scent; blackness stretches on in either direction, infinite and, bizarrely, not terrifying in the least. He’s been here before, however briefly, and witnessed a beige-colored figure that very much resembled himself from the past. There’s no reason to be afraid.

There’s a touch to his shoulder. He turns around and sees that it’s himself, that it’s Steve from the past, twenty years old and skinny.

He crosses his arms over his chest and blinks. “Are we stuck?” he asks, furrowing his brows. The ring is gone from his finger since all the jewels shown and faded to black; if they are stuck, he’ll do whatever he needs to get back home, regardless of the magic he still doesn’t understand.

For a moment, he wishes Leslie were here. She would know what to do. 

“I don’t think so,” his younger self replies, frowning just the same as him. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so earth-shattering and acutely humbling. “I wanted to stop and it stopped.”

“Why?”

“I saw you, before. I wanted to talk to you.”

Steve looks at his right hand, at his newly bare finger; the only proof that the ring was there at all is the stifled tannin left behind. “And the gem just let that happen?”

“I stopped asking questions when I woke up in a different decade.”

Steve laughs at that. “Where did you go?” he asks. 

His younger self smiles, gently, and ducks his head. “There was six months in 1975 where the Winter Soldier remembered who he was,” he answers. Steve swallows his gasp; he knows some of Bucky’s time as the soldier, little tidbits spoken here and there, over breakfast or during a bath or while walking as the sun sets, and the six months in 1975 was the last time he defected until the fall of SHIELD. “I was with him. We stayed in a cabin in Canada. It was odd.” He blinks, slowly. “It was good, though.”

“I thought maybe you went to my time,” Steve says, mostly to himself. That’s what he and Bucky hoped, at least; now, though, he knows that his husband has been alone for a month. He shakes his head. “Did you take care of him?”

“Of course I did,” his younger self says, a bit miffed. “I love him.”

Steve laughs. He wants to tell the angry, defensive kid in front of him that he isn’t special or contrastive for loving that version of Bucky Barnes. Every version of Steve loves every version of Bucky; to think that one is better than the other is to think that love can be measured through the years like a currency.

Love is not a currency. The kid in front of Steve, dressed in a too-long pair of bellbottoms and a ruby-red blouse, has a lot to learn. It’s a very good thing that Bucky is head over ass in love with every version of Steve, too.

“I’m glad he had you,” he says, and he means it. “Even if it was only for a month. He deserved the kindness and peace you gave him.”

The kid’s brows furrow. “He was scared.” He seems perplexed, like there’s a puzzle in front of him that’s nearing completion but he’s missing the vital piece to bring it all together. “He was gentle, though. More than my Bucky.”

“We end happy.” Proud and terribly in love, Steve holds up his left hand. The ring, somehow, glints in the blackness, as if, somehow, there is sunshine. “We end together.”

Is it an end, though, when their lives with one another just began, less than a year ago?

The kid lifts his chin, defiant and headstrong even now, looking as if he’s ready to go to war to fight for the love he shares with Bucky. And Steve knows he would—after all, he did so more than once. The younger man in front of Steve isn’t special in that regard, either. They’re the same person, after all.

“Good.” The kid sniffs. “Were you good to him?”

Steve grins and rubs the back of his neck. “He was good to me,” he answers, bashful. “He was very good to me.”

“Of course he was.” His tone is fondly exasperated, the product of spending years under the watchful eyes of the man that loves him. “He loves to take care of me.” He smiles. “Us, I mean.” 

“Yes, he does,” Steve agrees. “He’s waiting for you, you know. He was sleeping when I left. You could crawl into bed with him. I think he’ll be happy to wake up to you.”

His younger self blushes, as if it’s a secret that he and Bucky share a bed more often than not. “Yeah,” he whispers, mostly to himself; Steve thinks he’s intruding on a moment of realization, as strange as that is, watching the kid in front of him realize and be bowled over with the depth of his love for his best friend. It’s kind of funny. “Yeah, I think I’ll do that.”

Steve wonders if that’s what his husband is doing—sleeping, curled up in bed and waiting for Steve to return, to crawl into bed and face their bodies toward one another. He hopes so.

Steve is suddenly sick of waiting. “I want to go home,” he says, easily, simply. The pull is strong, a rope around his shoulders that’s tugging insistently; it’s hard to fight against and he is getting tired of holding himself back. He wants to give up, give in, and go home. 

His smaller self nods and smiles. “Then go,” he gives the permission, and Steve, overcome with an odd sort of wistful feverishness, bends to kiss himself on the forehead.

“Don’t run from him,” Steve warns. “Do not run from the man you love, you bastard.”

He laughs. “Even if I tried,” he begins, shaking his head, looking up at Steve; the smile on his face is bold and bright and beautiful, and he hopes that that is how Bucky always sees him, “I wouldn’t get very far. He’d just chase me down.”

“You’re right.”

His past self sobers and looks up at him, then, with a curious gaze. “I’m happy,” he begins, almost reverent, “that you’re the man I grow up to be.”

Maybe it’s the sheer incredibility of the situation, the fact that he traveled to the past and is now standing in the in-between and having a conversation with his past self, but he says, with a fealty older than time, “It started with you.”

He pulls himself into a hug, as odd as that is, and holds on until the strings of the future finally pull him back home.

* * *

—he lands with a solid thud. The ground is firm and the grass smells fresh; the dew is on and the chill of the morning pebbles his skin. He looks around, quickly, and notices that it’s the same place he was in before he shifted to 1938.

He smiles. Of course. _Of course._

“Steve?” a voice—Sam, and it feels so good to hear that voice after days of going without—calls, half-hopeful and twice as wary. “Is that you?”

“Yeah,” Steve replies. “It’s me, Sam. I’m back.” 

There’s a moment of silence, and then, “You bastard,” and, suddenly, Sam and Thor, too, are barreling toward him at high speeds with intent in their eyes.

It’s a frenzy after that. Sam and Thor—both of whom, apparently, built a makeshift camp just a few yards away from the crash site that has since been picked up and removed in the month after Steve’s sudden departure—touch him with rough, relieved hands and pat him down, check his vitals, and then, when they’re satisfied, hug him so hard his breath leaves his lungs.

He holds on to them. He holds on to them, one arm around both of their shoulders, and stuffs his face in their necks, and does not let go until the three of them are laughing, slightly crazed, and their comms are going off.

They all pull away, slightly shaky; Thor goes about finding some clothing of his that will fit Steve—because Sam doesn’t need any more fuel to the jokes he makes at Steve’s expense; the half-tied trousers and white socks from the past are only adding to the “old man” appeal Steve is trying so desperately to get rid of—while Sam digs through his pockets and finds a phone.

“Call your husband,” Sam says with an exasperated grin as he tosses the phone to Steve. “He’s been beside himself for a bit.”

Steve hugs Sam once more. “Thank you,” he says, and it’s for everything—for being there for Steve through everything, to taking over the mantle of Captain America, to sticking by Steve’s side when he never had to.

Sam nods, solemn, and then he smiles, still the same guy who has the power to split the sky in two as he was a decade ago when the two of them first met.

Steve takes the phone and wanders off for privacy. He hurries to change out of his trousers and into the denim jeans and sweater; he folds the clothes from the past and tucks them under his arm, unwilling to part with them just yet, and wipes his hair off his forehead.

He takes a deep breath and looks up.

The sun is lifting, languid and cozy, above the mountains in the distance. Splashing colors paint across the sky, all sorts of shades of apricot and moss and cerulean. Quickly, Steve digs the phone out of his pocket and snaps a picture; he scrolls through the contacts until he finds Bucky’s name and then sends the photo with the caption, _the sunrise is beautiful in Sweden._

A moment passes before the phone buzzes. Steve looks at the screen, sees Bucky’s _it isn’t up at home yet, so come watch it again with me,_ and laughs because there is nothing better he can think to do.

* * *

The house is quiet when Steve walks through the front door. Light from outside filters through the windows, and he’s careful as he walks through the kitchen, down the corridor, toward the bedroom at the end of the hall, avoiding the creaking floorboards that tend to always whine under his weight.

The door of the bedroom, built wide enough for Steve’s broad shoulders, is open; he walks inside and sees that the bed in the center of the room is empty, unmade and messy, with mounds of blankets and pillows spread about. The plants on either side have grown in the month Steve was away, their vines reaching and curling up the bedposts like arms of ivy; there’s books and records and knitting projects scattered about, disorganized and half-chaotic and everything that Steve didn’t realize he missed while he was gone.

All of it—everything: waking up with his husband, offering halfhearted opinions on the embroidery his husband does in the evenings, taking walks through the fields around their house, pushing his husband against any surface he can find and dropping to his knees, stuffing his face under the skirt of the dress his husband has on so he can swallow him down in one go.

He missed it. Fuck, he missed it so much.

To the right, the door of the bathroom adjacent to their bedroom is open. The scent of vanilla and lavender floats out with a current of hot, humid air; the sounds of water trickling and Bucky’s content humming follows the beguiling smell of heady cleanliness and Steve, pulled by an invisible force of fate that always seems to be bringing the two of them together, makes his way toward his husband.

Bucky is in the tub in the center of the room, facing the floor-to-ceiling windows that look outside at the creek and willow tree and rising hills that are colored with apricot and tangerine and burnt peach. His hair, long and curling, is tied up high on top of his head in a bun. Small tendrils are falling out of the elastic, clinging to the slope of his damp neck, wispy and faerie-like. 

Smiling, feeling his heart jump and settle in excitement and blessed content, Steve walks into the room and begins to shrug out of his clothes. He makes a bit of noise because Bucky looks over his shoulder and sizes Steve up; his expression is unimpressed but his eyes are sparkling like a mass of falling stars, flashing in and out of light and beautiful, fleetingly, but captivating enough to last forever.

“You missed the sunrise,” he says, cross.

“I did.” Steve kicks out of his jeans. “The jet only flew so fast.”

“Hmm.” Bucky splashes the heavily-scented water up onto his chest, hidden by the bubbles. “My husband simply would not have missed a sunrise with me.”

Steve shucks his boxers. “Well,” he begins, rounding the tub and climbing in; he does not miss the way Bucky’s gaze drops to his cock, half-interested between his legs, “your husband will be here tomorrow morning to watch it with you.”

The water is almost too hot but fuck, it feels good, feels so good to sink low and let the vanilla and lavender scent envelope him in a bubble as his husband stretches his legs out, resting his feet suggestively close to Steve’s cock. He settles and relaxes, giving Bucky the dopiest grin.

He’s back with his husband. Finally.

“And everyday after?” Bucky asks, blinks, and toes, just a little bit, at Steve’s prick.

Steve, grinning, grabs Bucky’s wayward foot in his hand and begins to rub the bottom, pressing his thumbs hard into the arch and massaging in tight circles. “If that’s what you want.”

Bucky continues to splash water across his shoulders and chest, acting as if he is unaffected by Steve’s proximity after being away from one another for a month. “Well, if you’re granting wishes based off what I want,” he begins, curling his lips into a smirk, “then I want you to keep rubbing my feet.”

“That’s hardly any trouble.”

“I also want you to wash my hair.”

“Of course.” Steve presses his lips to Bucky’s ankle. “Anything else, my love?”

Bucky’s smirk deflates, and then he’s smiling, and it’s the most beautiful thing Steve has ever seen, in any timeline, because it’s coming from his husband and is given to him to keep. “I want you to kiss me,” he says, leaning forward and drawing himself as close to Steve as he can. “I want you to hold me. I’ve missed you so much.”

Steve brings Bucky’s lips to his. Their kiss is soft, sweet, a balm of salve on a wound that’s raw and painful. Slowly, so slowly, Steve parts Bucky’s lips with his tongue and licks inside, tasting mint and faint sleep and wet warmth.

He aches like the earth when her skin splits into a chasm. Bucky is the first signs of life in the abyss that is Steve’s life, simple little tufts of green that take something monstrous and cavernous and make it habitable and, then, flourishing with the beauty of life.

He pulls back, half destroyed but tame, and says, “I’ve missed you.”

Bucky presses a kiss to the corner of Steve’s mouth. “Good,” Bucky says, thickly, heavy-lidded with cheeks that are cherry red. He grabs his favorite bottle of shampoo and puts it in Steve’s hand. “Now hurry and wash my hair, and tell me about your time away. I plan to keep you in bed for hours, and there won’t be any time for talking then.”

* * *

Bucky’s hair, long and curly and cherry-brown, spreads out on the pillows as Steve lays him down after their bath. Steve settles atop him, softly, and cradles Bucky’s face in his hands because Steve cherishes him the way a god values the fear they inflict with their power.

Leisurely, they kiss, learning one another all over again. Bucky sighs into Steve’s mouth and curls his arms around Steve’s neck, holding him close; Steve sifts his fingers through Bucky’s hair, captivated by the length, by the smell, by the feel. Bucky smiles into their kiss so big that his cheeks surely ache with the stretch. 

He missed this. So much. It’s as if there was a cavern in his chest, deep in a place that he never thought would be harmed, and now it’s full once more, of life and love and peace, and there is nothing in the world that can tear him away from his husband ever again.

_Ever again._

Steve has a sudden thought, one that leaves a sour taste in his mouth. He pulls up and off Bucky, frowning. “Was it better?” he asks, quietly, and smooths the pad of his thumb along Bucky’s protruding clavicle. 

Bucky blinks. “Was what better?” He runs his hands up and down, up and down Steve’s arms, finding muscles and squeezing, kneading.

He breathes deeply. “Is it—is it this? Is this how you want me?”

This—big, strong, large, almost chubby, with shoulders that require the doorframes in their house to be widened slightly in order to fit him. 

Bucky blinks once more, in viscid confusion that leeches onto Steve, too, and then his eyes go wide and astonished as realization dawns. “Oh.” He holds Steve’s big face in his hands. “Oh, Steve. No.” He smiles and draws Steve down into a gentle kiss, sucking Steve’s bottom lip into his mouth. “I don’t want you a certain way, skinny or big. I just want you, Steve.” He rubs his nose against Steve’s, a gesture so tenderly intimate that it makes Steve tremble from sensation, from the acknowledgement that Bucky seems to always be able to say the right things to set his mind at ease. “Except gone. I don’t want you that way.”

Steve laughs. “I’ll try not to be gone anymore.”

“Good.” Bucky’s grin is like starlight. “That’s good.”

He pulls Steve down once more and they kiss for long, sweet moments. Bucky keeps making the most alluring noises, right into Steve’s mouth, little whimpers and whines that are as melodic as a symphony, like he’s reached the highest peak of pleasure from his alone, kissing Steve and touching Steve and being held by Steve.

Steve can no longer hold himself back; it’s been weeks since he’s touched his husband. He growls and drops his body, hard and hot, and Bucky spreads his legs wide, creates a cradle with his thighs. The kiss deepens, turns messy and wet, slick, full of teeth biting at fat lips and tongues licking far, tasting.

Bucky pulls away with a gasp that rattles in his chest and breathes heavily. His lips are red and wet, swollen from Steve’s sucks and bites. The blush on his cheeks washes down his neck, down his chest; he’s a cherry, Steve’s very own sweet treat.

With a feral grin, Bucky lifts his hips and rubs his weepy cock against Steve’s. “Is this for me?” heasks, teasing, and reaches down to grab Steve’s cock, not unkindly. He squeezes, just this side of too hard, just the way that Steve likes it, and Steve’s body stutters.

“Bucky,” Steve says, brokenly.

“I want this inside me,” Bucky says, wetting his lips. He grins, shows all his teeth. “Now, if that’s okay with you.”

Steve keens, looking down between the two of them. Bucky’s gripping his cock with his metal arm; the golden ring shines as Bucky gives Steve two solid, dry pumps of his hand. He pulls back the foreskin and fingers the slit.

Steve meets Bucky’s eyes. He grins. “And if it isn’t?”

Bucky pouts and lets go of Steve’s cock. “Well,” he begins, putting his hands on either of Steve’s shoulders, “I’ll just do it myself.”

In a flurry, he pushes at Steve’s shoulders and flips him over with a huff and resounding thump. He leans across the bed and digs through the drawers of the bedside table, procuring a bottle of lube. He’s quick and efficient, uncapping the lid and drizzling the slick on his fingers as he cradles Steve’s thighs between his legs and lifts up. He adjusts and turns, giving Steve his back; he reaches behind and spreads his ass with one hand. The fingers on the other tease and rub at his hole.

He grins when he presses the tip of his first finger in. “Fuck,” he says, breathes, laughs. “I’ve been doing this myself for the last month so much that I’ve gotten so good at it. Practically don’t even need you anymore.”

Steve grunts and puts his hands on Bucky’s ass. He grips, hard, and works the flesh beneath his fingertips. “Bucky—”

“No touching.” Bucky removes his finger and smacks Steve’s hands off his hips. Steve draws back with a furrowed brow and mewl of displeasure. “You wouldn’t put your cock in me when I asked so now you get to watch me get ready for you.” He reaches back once more, stuffs the same finger along with another inside his hole. “Don’t act like you don’t love it.”

Steve huffs and does as Bucky wishes, folding his arms beneath his head so he doesn’t touch his husband. He watches, taking in the movement of Bucky’s wrists, the depth of his fingers; his face scrunches up and relaxes in tandem as he fucks back. His cock, weeping at the tip, dribbles a puddle of clear fluid on Steve’s tummy that feels tacky as it cools.

“I’m ready,” Bucky says after a long moment. He removes his fingers, wipes them on the bed, and hands Steve the slick to get his cock wet. “Stick me.”

Steve swallows. He grips his cock with one hand, guides Bucky back and down with the other; it’s a fucking sight, watching, feeling Bucky’s hole resist at first before relenting and relaxing, eventually, as he continues to press in. Bucky jolts and cries out, hoarse and surprised, when his ass is flush with Steve’s hips.

Steve’s fingers tickle Bucky’s sides, concerned. “Are you okay?”

Bucky looks at him with an incredulous, exasperated expression. “Are you—I just came untouched, Steve.” He smacks Steve on the chest, playfully, and raises up till just the tip of Steve is inside of him. “Of course I’m okay.”

“Oh.” Steve cranes his head and watches the way Bucky’s gluttonous hole swallows his cock. “That’s neat.”

Bucky huffs. “Are you watching?” he asks, overly adoring, as he lifts up and drops down again. 

Steve nods. “You’re so open,” he says, mostly to himself, as he moves his hands and fingers at the spot he and Bucky are so connected. “Lemme see, please.”

Bucky gives Steve a dirty look over his shoulder but lets Steve look, anyway, leaning up and off Steve’s cock. Steve holds Bucky open with his hands, mesmerized at the way Bucky’s hole is wet and red and swollen, winking at him.

“Put it back in,” Bucky whines, humping back mindlessly till Steve grips his cock with one hand, guides Bucky’s greedy hole back onto him with the other. He sits on Steve’s lap with a breathless laugh. “Now I know how to get you to do anything I want.”

“And what’s that?”

“Show you my fucked out hole.”

Steve slaps Bucky’s ass cheek. “Hush.”

“Fuck me, then.” Bucky swivels his hips, grinding hard. “Shut me up.”

“Bucky.”

“C’mon, Steve.” Bucky looks over his shoulder at Steve, imploring and wistfully lost to being stuffed so full. “I know you fucked me while you were gone. I know you fucked me everyday, hard, and probably made me cry because that’s what gets you so hot. Fuck me now.” He bounces once, twice, three times before he gives up and sits, impaled. “I’ve gone a month without you, honey. My toys can only do so much.”

Steve growls. “I’m throwing your fucking toys away later,” he says and bucks up, hard, dislodging Bucky off his cock. “The only cock that should be inside you is mine.”

Bucky laughs, delighted that he’s about to be fucked, finally, and allows Steve to maneuver him onto his chest and into his favorite position, face shoved into the pillows and ass up, legs spread and half-heard cock messing the sheets.

“Then get in me,” Bucky says, wiggling his ass and spreading his legs for Steve to see his pink, glossy, fucked out hole. This angle is fierce and delicious; Steve decides that this is the most arousing thing he has ever seen. “Fuck me like you missed me.” 

Steve moves forward. He presses inside, again, and it’s still just as inviting now as it’s always been, as it always will be, and he doesn’t waste any time. He fucks Bucky hard, grips his hips to haul him back as he thrusts forward. The noise of their skin slapping permeates the air, wet and salaciously hot, and Bucky’s staccato of “ah ah ah” joins the sound of their love making and it’s all—

—it’s all too much.

Steve leans over, presses his chest against Bucky’s back. His thrusts slow till they’re nothing but a dirty, hard grind. Bucky mewls, and Steve kisses the nape of his neck, licks the sweat off till he’s sucking Bucky’s tongue, and then he moves his hand to Bucky’s cock, stripping it in a loose rhythm with his movements.

Bucky comes first, hard and weak, with his hand pressed against the pudge of his tummy where he can seemingly feel the depth of Steve’s cockhead, and collapses, body heaving as he tries to catch his breath. Steve follows quickly after, fucking inside as deeply as he can; he comes and comes and comes, for so long that he feels boneless and gone from this world.

He pulls out of Bucky, slowly, and then falls to the side, shoving his face into Bucky’s shoulder. He breathes in, breathes out; his heart is racing and he feels oversensitive and like his body is the earth, quaking and splitting and burning.

Has it always been like this? Or is he only now understanding that making love with the person you’re devoted to is enough to rearrange the world?

“God.” Bucky chuckles, low and bright, and clear and happy. He finds Steve’s hair with his hand and combs through the thickness. “God, that was—you are fucking incredible, my love.”

Steve hums. “Better?”

Bucky barks a laugh, half-strangled. “Than what?” he asks, dubious. “Actually, no, it doesn’t even matter. Stop comparing yourself to who you were when we were children. It’s—“ he cuts off, his throat bobbing. “It’s you. You terrible, foolish, stupid man.”

“Okay.”

“It’s you.” Bucky gasps, then. “You’re here. You’re _home_. Steve, come here.” He threads his fingers in Steve’s hair and tugs. “Let me hold you.”

Steve swallows. He crawls up the bed and allows himself to be pressed down against the pillows; Bucky lays beside him, propped up on one arm and dragging his knuckles across Steve’s jaw, Steve’s shoulders, Steve’s chest, touching everywhere he can, grabbing skin and flesh and squeezing so hard it almost hurts.

He doesn’t say anything. He endures. He understands it, anyway—it has only been one month, thirty days, but, still, that is too long. That is _too long_. 

“You’re here.” 

Steve wraps his arms around Bucky’s shoulders. “I’m sorry I was gone.” He presses his lips to Bucky’s forehead. “I’m so sorry, honey.”

“That’s okay.” Bucky lays his cheek against Steve’s chest, right above his heart. “You can make it up to me.”

“How?”

Bucky tweaks one of Steve’s nipples. “I have a few ideas.”

They don’t go to sleep until the sun is high in the sky.

* * *

Hours later, as the sun is beginning to set, flirting with the horizon, Steve pulls on sweats and a t-shirt and shoves his feet into his boots and wraps a shawl around his shoulders. His legs are weak like jelly, no doubt from the three orgasms Bucky rode him to, but he only stumbles once, catching himself on the kitchen table. He goes in search of his husband and finds Bucky in the backyard, leaning against the trunk of the weeping willow; he’s wearing Steve’s clothing, sweatpants and a large sweater, with a blanket tucked up and around him.

Steve sits next to him and cuddles close, delighting in the shared body heat. “Should’ve known you’d leave our bed to come watch the sunset,” he says, playfully, and presses his lips to Bucky’s temple. “You could have woken me up.” 

Bucky opens his arms and draws Steve beneath the blanket with him. “If you hadn’t been sleeping like you were dead to the world and paid me a little bit of attention,” he says, gravelly; Steve fucked his mouth like it was nothing more than another warm, wet hole for his cock just a few hours ago, after all, and apparently his throat is still sore, “I wouldn’t have felt the need to leave our bed.”

Steve laughs and lays his cheek against Bucky’s shoulder. “You say that like I didn’t just fuck you till you begged me to stop.”

“Hmm.” Bucky finds Steve’s hand with his and interlaces their fingers. “I’m still young. I can take a lot.”

“You’re older than me.”

“Don’t tell anybody that,” Bucky hushes, as if they have an audience of eavesdroppers. Steve made Sam and Thor swear to give him and Bucky at least one week together before they met up with the rest of the family and made their way over. He doesn’t think the leaves and critters in the woods care much about their banter. “They all think you’re older.”

“Do they honestly?” When Bucky nods, feigning solemnity, Steve sighs and says, fondly, “Idiots.”

“Hey.” Bucky taps him on the tip of the nose. “They’re our family.”

“They’re still idiots.”

Bucky makes a noise of acquiescence. “They learned it from you.”

Steve pouts. “I’ll do my best not to teach our children to be against me the way our friends are.”

Bucky says nothing. He draws his legs up to his chest and lays his chin on top of his knees; his hair is pulled back, tied on top of his head with a bumblebee-print scrunchie that Natasha sent to him a few months ago. Bits of wispy curls are loose and flitting about his face.

The silence ebbs and flows for a short time. It’s nice, listening to one another’s breathing, and the sound of the creek as it trickles across mossy rock, and the birds as they call their mates back to the nests after foraging for food, and the leaves as they sift and sigh in the breeze.

The sky is an eruption of color. Blood orange, ripe apricot, a pink like the petals of a lily; the blue meanders from light to dark, and a dotting of sparkling stars are concentrated above them.

Steve tucks an errant strand of hair behind Bucky’s ear. “What are you thinking about, sweetheart?” he asks, gently. “You’ve got that thousand yard stare you always tease me about. What’s on your mind?”

Bucky furrows his brows. “No more,” he says, softly. The breeze nearly carries it away, but Steve grasps hold of it as quickly as he can. “No more, Steve.”

“No more what?”

“No more,” Bucky says, again, and moves till he’s in front of Steve and they’re facing each other, legs crossed between them. “You’re not leaving me anymore.”

Steve draws in a tight breath. “Honey—”

“You die here.” Bucky’s voice is firm. “You die here with me on our farm, in our house, surrounded by our family and our children. I’m not waiting for you any longer because you’re not leaving me ever again.” He reaches for Steve’s cheeks, then, and cradles Steve’s face in the palms of his hands. He has the touch of a man who knows how to cherish those he loves. “Do you hear what I’m saying, Steve Rogers? No more fighting. No more missions. You’re officially retired.”

Steve stays quiet. Bucky continues.

“We’re married, darling. And we’re about to adopt children. We’re about to have a family of our own.” Bucky’s smile is watery and weak, and he kisses Steve on the forehead, briefly, before resuming his speech. “I can’t be left behind to explain to our children why their father is gone, or hurt, or not coming back at all. I can’t tell them that their father chose fighting battles that are no longer his over the family that will love him even after his glory fades.”

“I would never,” Steve insists, almost appalled. His glory has never meant a goddamn thing to him. “Bucky, I would never do that to you or our children.”

“Then act like it.” Bucky’s face softens and he rubs the skin beneath Steve’s eyes with the pad of his thumbs. The touch is so tender, so gentle that he feels like he’s just been punched in the gut. This man is too good to him; sometimes, he isn’t sure he deserves it but, by God, he wants it. “There’s nothing wrong with being selfish, Steve. You’ve earned that. We’ve earned that.”

Stricken, Steve leans forward and presses his forehead against Bucky’s. He breathes in, breathes out; allows himself to think, to dig deep.

He hates fighting. He has always hated fighting, even when he was an angry kid in Brooklyn, but he was good at it; people saw that, the way he was good at violence and destruction, something that resounds with every one in a variety of ways, and labelled him a hero because he wasn’t afraid to go to war for the things he believed in.

But things have changed. Time has gone forward, turning days into years into decades into centuries, soon, and what he was good at before is not what he wants to be remembered by.

He wants to be good at loving his husband. He wants to be good at tucking his children into bed, reading them bedtime stores, playing hide and seek with them; he wants to be good at going to bed beside Bucky every night, at waking up beside Bucky every morning. He wants to be good at making room for their children when they climb into bed to cuddle between them because that’s where they feel the safest.

He wants to know his daughter’s favorite tree and help them build a house on the sturdiest branches. He wants to know his son’s favorite television show and sit down on the sofa, draw them in his arms, and watch it with them till Bucky shoos them into the kitchen for dinner. He wants to know all of them—sons and daughters, all the children he and Bucky adopt and build a home with. He wants to know them like he knows Bucky, like he knows himself.

He doesn’t want to be a good soldier. That time is long gone; the shield has been passed and it’s time that the legend of the first Captain America gathers dust in the history books the same way that the photos from their life before the war do in the attic. He wants to be a good man—he wants to be a good husband and a good father.

That’s how he wants to be remembered, long after he’s gone.

He scoffs. The exit in a blaze of glory is bullshit, after all. 

Steve turns his face and nuzzles Bucky’s palm, kissing the metal. “Okay.”

Bucky makes a noise, half-giddy and fully spooked. “That’s it?”

Steve nods, shrugs. “That’s it,” he answers. There’s no need to make it complicated; the least difficult thing in his life has always been the knowledge that he loves Bucky and Bucky loves him. “I don’t want to be gone anymore, either. Being without you was… unsettling.” He chuckles, lightly. “I don’t know if I can ever go without you next to me again.” 

Bucky grins. He leans forward and captures Steve’s mouth with his; the kiss is messy, and they’re smiling so hugely that their lips catch and release, as if they’re playing cat and mouse with one another. Steve makes a noise in the back of his throat and lets the intimacy of this moment wash over him like a welcoming hug from the arms of his husband after being gone for so long.

Bucky pulls back. He’s still grinning. His lips are pink and wet, and Steve has never seen him more beautiful than he is now, hair unbrushed and cheeks ruddy from the chill, with the sunlight fading and falling below the hill behind him.

“Let’s go inside.” Bucky begins to get up, tugging Steve along with him.

“Wait.” Steve catches Bucky around the waist before he can get up, pulling him down and against his side. He curls against Bucky, over Bucky, and tucks his face into the junction of Bucky’s neck and shoulder. It’s warm there, the same way it always has been. “Let’s stay out here for a little longer.”

Bucky makes a pleased noise and leans back against Steve. “You’re so sentimental,” he says, teasingly, adoringly, and finds Steve’s hand with his, lacing their fingers tight.

“Yeah,” Steve agrees. He kisses Bucky’s cheek. “Yeah, I am.”


End file.
